-co
/ ' ; -
MY MUSICAL LIFE.
' The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting towards eternity."
(Last Portrait.)
Frontispiece.
BY THE
REV. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A.
AUTHOR OF "MUSIC AND MORALS," ETC.
" THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES," " SPEECH IN SEASON," " ARROWS IN THE AIR,"
'CURRENT COIN," "POETS IN THE PULPIT," "PET," "THE AMERICAN HUMORISTS,
"ASHES TO ASHES," "THE KEY," ETC.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
All rights reserved
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
TO MY FATHER,
THE REV. J. O. W. HAWEIS, M.A.
(PREBENDARY OF CHIOHESTER),
TO WHOSE TIMELY AND THOUGHTFUL EFFECTS
I OWE MY EARLIEST MUSICAL TRAINING,
$ Dedicate
THESE LATER STUDIES OF MY LEISURE HOURS.
PRELUDE.
PARABLES OF THE GOLDEN SEA
THE TIDAL WAVES BEAT UPON THE SHORES OP THE AGE8
THEY ABE THE WAVES OF HUMAN FEELING
THE EBB AND FLOW OF EMOTION
TIMING THE PULSES OF THE HEART
THE WINDS RISE AND FALL
THE FITFUL BREATH OF PASSION
THE BLAST OF VOWER
THE SIGH OF RAPTURE THE SWOON OF DEATH
THE CLOUDS GATHER AND PASS
PROPHETS OF SORROW HERALDS OF TEMPEST
SHADOWS OF PAIN AND LOSS
JOY LIES A LONELY WRECK
AND GRIEF IS LOUD
AND THE NIGHT IS FILLED WITH STARS
BUT THE MORNING BREAKS
AND BEYOND THE SEA AND THE CLOUD RACK
GLOWS THE IMPENETRABLE BLUE
I STAND ON THE SHORE AND UTTEE,
PARABLES OF THE GOLDEN SEA
CONTENTS.
Jird
EAELY DAYS.
I. NOBWOOD AND LONDON. 1846-1860.
Page
1. Self 8
2. "Music and Morals' 1 .4
3. Tarisio . .... 4
4. Fiddle Shops 7
6. Dr. Maitland ......... 8
6. The First Time 9
7. The Great Exhibition of 1851 10
8. A Trance . H
9. The " Midsummer Night's Dream " -12
10. The Mendelssohn Spell 14
11. The Year 1847 '. 15
12. Mendelssohn's Death 16
13. My Visions of Mendelssohn lg
14. Nursery Fiddles lg
15. First Lessons ...... 19
16. Early Practice 21
17. A New Impulse 22
18. Sainton, Piatti, Hill, Cooper . . 23
x CONTENTS.
Pago
19. Mdlle. Clauss 24
20. Bottesini 20
21. The Boy Joachim 28
22. Hullah 28
23. Miss Dolby 29
24. Mons. Jullien ... 30
25. Ernst ... - . .31
26. Sivori, Chatterton 33
11. BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OP WIGHT. 1850-1856.
27. My Second Master 34
28. My Third Master . . .36
29. The Mystery of Teaching 37
30. My Last Master, Oury 38
31. Oury's Method 42
32. The Brighton Symphony Society ....... 44
33. Oury on Jullien 44
34. Sainton on Mendelssohn and Beethoven 45
35. My Violin . 46
36. Charm of Orchestral Playing . .47
37. Freshwater, Isle of Wight 48
38. School at Freshwater 50
39. My Solos 52
40. At Farringford 53
41. Tennyson . . ........ 55
42. My Visit to Tennyson in 1854 56
43. Mrs. Tennyson . 60
44. The Link of Oblivion . 62
45. Accompanyists . . , 63
46. Music at Brighton in 1856 66
47. Playing at Parties ... 67
48. The Soloist must be seen .... ... 69
49. " Moments Perdus " 69
60. A Sacrifice . . 71
51. Brighton Taste ... 73
52. Musical Quality . 73
53. Natural Gifts 74
54. Seaside Minstrels .... 75
CONTENTS.
m. CAMBBIDGB. 1856-1859.
Paw
55. Dr. Whewell and Sedgwick . . . . . . , . .77
66. Whewell and Music 81
57. My Neighbours 83
68. I Play a Solo .... ..,.,. 84
69. Old Dog Tray . 86
60. My Quartet Society .87
61. William Kingsley and Turner 88
62. " The Lion " and " The Bear" .90
G3. Newspaper Articles .... ... 91
64. Old Venua : A Strange Visitor . .... 92
65. Venua's Talk 94
66. A Concert Freak .... 97
67. Music and Moonlight 98
68. Mrs. Ellicott 100
69. What doth it profit ? . . 100
IV. ITALY. 1860.
70. With Garibaldi . 103
71. Garibaldi's Hymn ... . .... 104
72. A Letter from Garibaldi 105
73. Hair-breadth Escapes ......... 105
74. Music in Italy 107
75. Alone at Milan 108
76. Golden Nights 110
77. A Strange Bell .111
78. Full Moon 112
V. BETHNAL GBEEN AND WESTMINSTER. 1861-1864
79. A Sudden Change 113
80. A Sacrifice 114
81. An East End Parish .115
82. John Richard Green 116
83. Music and the Masses ........ 116
84. Last Appearances .... . . . 118
xii CONTENTS.
Page
85. In Pace 120
86. New Duties 120
87. The Oratorical and Artistio Temperament 121
88. First Literary Successes 123
89. Writing 124
90. Hcmell's " Venetian Life " 125
91. Music and Morals . . 126
92. Why I print " My Musical Lifo " 128
$ook.
BY THE GOLDEN SEA.
I. INTERLUDE OK RECURRENT
93. A Sentence by F. D. Maurice ..... . . 131
94. Mind-bias ........... 132
95. Root Thoughts ....... . . .133
96. A Retrospect ......... .135
IL THE RATIONALE OF Music.
97. The Eternal Why ...... ... 136
98. How to discuss Music . ....... 136
99. Rough Elements of Sound .'.... . 137
100. Noise ............ 139
101. Musical Tone ........... 140
102. Birth of Music .......... 141
103. Expression the Imperative Mood ....... 144
104. Art relieves Feeling ......... 144
105. The Day and the Hour . . . ...... 145
106. Rise, Progress, and Decay ..... ... 146
107. Music Latest Bora ......... 148
108. Secret of Music .......... 149
109. Periods of Modern Music ........ 150
110. Music and Emotion . . . 151
CONTENTS. xiii
Page
111. New Illustrations . . .... 152
112. Use of Music . 155
113. Songs of the Temple 156
114. Songs of the Street 156
115. Music means Morals 157
116. Richter on Bellini 158
117. Refining Discipline 158
118. An English School of Music .... . . 159
119. Board School Music ...... . . 1GO
III. INTEBLUDE ON SENSE CHANNELS.
120. Unity of Sense 162
121. An Anonymous MS . 163
122. The Human Ear 163
IV. HEARING Music.
123. Deaf and Blind 166
124. Deaf for Ten Minutes 167
125. The Musical Ear 169
126. Helmholtz on the Ear 170
127. What is the Musical Ear ? . 171
128. An Apology before the Curtain 172
129. Mrs. De Perkins " At Home " 173
130. In a Niche 174
131. You must not Talk. Moral 174
132. Concerts and Ballads .... .... 176
133. The " Elijah " at Birmingham in 1846. Mendelssohn . . .178
134. The Mixed Monster Concert 179
135. The Mixed Chamber Concert 179
136. Shadows of the Past 180
137. A Night in the Past ... 183
138. Italy 186
139. Holland 187
140. Emotion and the Painter 187
141. Magic of Music 188
142. Secret of the Auditory Nerve 189
143. Music in a Room . . . 191
xiv CONTENTS.
*age
1 44. }IUB!C and Space t >
145. SoTind-Filtering 192
146. Beneficence of Mnsic .....< 194
147. Music as a Restorative ...... ( 195
148. The Musical Healer .196
149. " Music and Morals " again ....... . 199
150. The Greeks' "Musical "Discipline 200
151. Mechanism of the Emotional Art .... . 202
152. Tale of a " Song Without Words " 203
153. Lied Ohne Worte, Book II. 4 204
154. Training of Abstract Emotion ...... . 207
155. Effect of the " Messiah " on the Masses 208
156. Give the People Music 209
157. The Key 212
CBEMONA.
I. INTERLUDE ON A Nionr AT THE ROYAL lN3Tmrno5.
158. My Violin . 215
159. Latent Knowledge . . 216
160. Good Advice 216
161. Preparation for the Royal Institution 217
162. A Rare Collection 218
163. Packing-up ....'....... 218
III OLD VIOLINS.
164. The Wood 220
165. How to select it .......... 221
166. Rare Properties 222
167. A Rare Collection 222
168. Violin Anatomy - . 224
169. The Sound-bar ....> .... 225
170. The Sound-post 226
CONTENTS. iv
Page
171. Strain of Strings and Neck . . . . . . . . 227
172. The Scroll 227
173. The Finger-board 228
174 ThePurfling 228
175. The Varnish . 229
176. The Bridge ........ . 230
177. The Sentiment of the Bridge 231
178. Violin strings 233
179. How to choose Strings 234
1 80. Violin Fascination 235
181. Violin History 237
182. An Elizabethan Violin 238
183. The Number of Strings . . .239
184. Violin Evolution 239
185. The Voice and the Violin . . . . . . .240
186. Transformation . 241
187. Four Strings . . 242
188. The Italian Schools. 1520-1760. Duiffoprngcar . . . .243
189. The Brescian School. 1520-1620. Gaspar di Salo . . .244
190. Violin Carving . . 244
191. A Famous Gaspar described .... . 246
192. G. P. Maggini 247
193. The Cremona School. 1550-1740 . . . . . . .247
194. The Amati 248
195. The Gnarnerii and Stradivarius 249
196. The Great Nicolas 250
197. Stradivarius 251
198. A Specimen Detail 252
] 99. The End of Stradivarius 253
200. The Great Joseph 255
201. The End of the Cremonese School 256
202. Florence, Bologna, Rome . 257
203. The French School 258
204. The German School . . .258
205. The English School 259
206. Tone Qualities .... 260
III. INTERLUDE ON A CERTAIN LOAN COLLECTION.
'207. Relation to the Previous Discourse .... 264
CONTENTS.
IV. A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
F#t
208. Behind Glass . ......... 265
209. Cremona Carving . ... ...... 266
210. I revert to Violin History ........ 266
211. Sketch of Violin Progress ........ 267
212. Frets and Finger-boards ... ..... 268
213. The Viol d'Amore .......... 269
214. Sympathetic Wires . ........ 271
215. The Quartett ...... ..... 271
216. The " Little Violin " becomes Popular ...... 273
217. Rare Old Specimens ......... 275
218. The Story of Jacobus Stainer ....... 277
219. A few Names .......... 278
220. Character of Cremona Work ........ 279
221. Lost Conditions ........ . 283
222. Good and Bad Fiddles ......... 285
223. The Mystic Rule of Thumb . . . ..... 286
224. Dear to the Player .......... 288
225. The Soul of a Cremona ...... . . .288
226. Forgeries ........... 289
227. Violin Bows ........ ... 290
228. About Fiddlers ... ...... 291
229. The Clergy as Fiddlers ......... 293
230. Kings and Fiddlers ......... 294
231. Ladies as Violinists ......... 296
232. Violinists and their Violins . , . . . . . . .298
233. A Criticism on the Loan Collection . .... 300
234. TheMessie ........... 301
235. ThePucelle ........... 304
236. Antonius and Joseph ......... 305
237. Dragonetti's Basses ..... .... 306
238. Some Little Mistakes ......... 306
239. Prices ............ 308
V. INTEKLTJDB ON THB OBLIVION OF GREAT MEN.
240. Houses ............ 311
241. I visit Mendelssohn's House ........ 312
CONTENTS. xvii
Page
242. Who regards the Dead ? 313
243. The Vitality of Stradivarius 313
VL STRADIVARIUS OF CREMONA His HOUSE.
244. My Thoughts at Brescia . , .314
245. Not Known . 317
246. To the Cathedral 318
247. The Citizens of Cremona ..,,,... 319
248. I enter the House of Stradivariua ....... 322
249. Stradivarins's Workshop ....,,,. 324
250. A Nail in a Beam 326
251. "Addio!" 327
VH. INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
252. Violins and Violinists 329
253. Lull! ., ... 330
254. Corelli 331
255. Baltzar and the Bannisters . , , . . . 832
256. Tartini 332
257. Boccherini 335
258. Viotti, Rode, De Beriot ..,.,,... 336
259. Kreutzer, Spohr, Paganini ..,.,... 337
VOL PAGANINI.
260. A New Apparition 339
261. Paganini Pere et Mere 340
262. Severe Early Training . ....... 341
263. The Despair of his Masters ........ 342
264. Playing and Gambling .....,.. 344
265. How he lost and won Violins ........ 345
266. A Respite from Toil ......... 346
267. Study and Composition ......... 347
268. Feeling after Effect . 348
269. Playing on One String . . . . . . . . . 349
270. His Prodigious Facility . . . , 350
b
xviii CONTENTS.
Page
271. A Narrow Escape 351
272. His Appearance .... 351
273. A Meeting 353
274. In the Storm ... 354
275. By Night 356
276. On the Guitar 356
277. Personal Traits 357
278. Art and Life 362
279. Enter Paganini 364
280. His Independence . .366
281. Paganini and Spohr and Lafont 367
282. His Health 368
283. Letter from his Mother . 369
284. Visit to Naples . 370
285. Inhuman Treatment. Travels ... ... 370
286. Triumphs at Vienna 372
287. Paganini Legends . 374
288. Paganini's Morals 375
289. Paganini's Temperament 376
290. At Paris ... 379
291. Paganini in London . 381
292. The Critics at Sea 382
293. Paganini's Specialities 383
294. Losses 385
295. The Night cometh . . . 386
296. The End 387
297. Over the Dead . 388
THE MUSIC OF THE FUTUEE.
L INTERLUDE ON THE TITLE OF THE FOURTH BOOK.
IL WAGNEB.
298. Wagner and Beethoven .... . , 893
299. Unity of the Arts . . 394
CONTENTS. xix
Page
300. Wagner the Boy , . 395
301. Expression 896
302. The Arts Defective 398
303. Individualism of Shakspere 399
304. The Greek Theatre ......... 400
305. The Soul of the Greek Drama , 402
306. Greek Chorus 403
307. The Individual in the Universal 404
308. Union of the Arts . . . 405
309. Wagner's Theory summed up ....... . 406
310. Italian Opera analysed 407
311. Gluck and the Incorrigible Opera ...... 409
312. The Musical Drama .410
313. Wagner's Masters . . . . . . . . .411
314. Wagner at Twenty 413
315. Rienri 414
316. Wagner Mob Orator 415
317. The Romantic Movement 417
318. Wagner's Lost MS. 418
319. Wagner and Meyerbeer 419
320. Wagner in Paris 421
321. The Flying Dutchman, 1841 422
322. First Success, Rienzi, 1842 424
323. Tannhauser, 1845 425
324. Failures .427
325. Lohengrin, 1847 ....... .427
326. Neglect and Exile, 1847-57 429
327. London, 1855 429
328. Von Billow's Influence, 1874 431
329. Cipriani Potter on Wagner 431
330. The Tetralogie Meistersinger Tristan 432
331. Wagner's Egotism 434
332. Was Wagner Vain P.......... 436
333. Wagner and the Queen 436
334. Wagner at Home 437
335. Wagner's Generosity 438
336. Victor Hugo on Wagner 439
337. Wagner's Light-heartedness 439
338. Kindness to Animals . 439
xx CONTENTS.
Page
339. Wagner's Unselfishness . ..... 440
340. Joukowski and Wagner 441
341. Wagner and the Singers ... . 441
342. An Evening at Wagner's House ... ... 442
343. Wagner's Theatre .... . 444
344. Wagner's Conducting 445
345. The Festivals of 1876-82 447
346. The Wagner Mania in London 447
347. To Venico . -448
348. His Temperamental Vigour . 449
349. His Morning 449
350 His Afternoon 450
351. Wagner and Byron love Light ... .... 452
352. Liszt's Visit to Wagner 453
353. Wagner beloved by the People 453
354. Strange Presentiment 454
355. The Approach of Death 455
356. Death 456
357. Reception of the News 458
358. The Gondolier's Tribute . , 459
359. Funeral Honours : 459
360. Arrival of the Coffin at Bayreuth .461
361. The Grave .... 461
362. I visit Wagner's Grave ; 462
HI. INTERLUDE ON THE LAST CROWN.
363. Elaborate Scoring 465
364. Last Photograph ........... 466
365. Speeches by Liszt and Wagner 466
IV. PARSIFAL
366. The Mystic Union 468
367. Montsalvat ... 470
368. Titurel 470
369. Klingsor ... 471
370. The Fall of Amfortia 471
371. I enter the Theatre .472
CONTENTS. xxi
First Act.
Page
372. Orchestral Prelude , . . 472
373. Sunrise 473
374. Kundry 474
375. Amfortis approaches ......... 475
376. Gurnemanz's Narrative 476
377. Kundry's Narrative 476
378. Kundry's Sleep 477
379. Passage to Montsalvat 477
380. The Hall of the Knights 479
381. The Holy Grail 480
382. This is my Blood 481
383. The Spiritual Impression made 482
384. The Meaning of the Guileless Fool ...... 483
Second Act.
385. Klingsor Prelude 485
386. Apparition of Kundry 485
387. A Garden of Girls 486
388. The New Love Duet. An Analysis 487
389. Kundry baffled 489
390. Solemn Thoughts 490
Third Act.
391. Prelude of the Tears 491
392. The Summer Land 492
393. Waking of Kundry 492
394. The Black Knight 493
395. A Sacred Picture 494
396. The Kiss of Peace 495
397. Amfortis is healed 49G
398. A Touching Incident 497
V. INTEELUDB ON BAYKEUTH CITT.
399. Past and Present 499
400. The Plague 600
xxii CONTENTS.
401. Modern Bayreuth ..... ..... 501
402. The Old Opera-House ......... 502
403. Smells of the City . . ....... 502
404. Enterprize of Bayreuthers ...... . 503
405. Jean Paul waits ........ . 504
VI. THE NIBELUNO'S RINO.
I. Bheingold.
406. The Heat in 1876 505
407. Wagner Worship . . . . . . . . . .506
408. The Rhine Girla 507
409. Rheingold 507
410. Subtle Art 608
411. Plot 509
412. The Colour Art 510
413. The Rainbow Scene 611
II. Walkure.
414. Enter the King and Wagner 612
415. Siegmund and Sieglinde . . . . . . . .512
416. Brunnhilde's Mission 514
417. The Fight 515
418. In the Cafe 516
419. The Walkure Chorus . 517
420. The Sleep of the Walkure 618
III. Siegfried.
421. Wagner's Recitative , ....... 619
422. Mime works 620
423. Mime and Siegfried 621
424. The Welding of the Sword 621
425. The Dragon's Cave 522
426. Singfried Apart .623
427. Mise-en-scene .......... 623
428. A Sorry Dragon 624
CONTENTS. xxiii
Page
429. Bird Music in Summer Land 524
430. Contrasts ... 525
431. Love Duets 526
432. The Surrender , 526
IV. Gttterdammerung.
433. The Vision of the Noras 528
434. Siegfried leaves Briinnhilde 528
435. The House of Hagen 629
436. Capture of Briinnhilde 530
437. The Murder 531
438. The End 531
439. A Speech by Wagner 633
VII. INTERLUDE ON TANNHAUSBR AND LOHENGRIN.
440. Wagner's Music, 1860 638
441. The Dramas placed 539
442. Ideal Types 540
VIII. TANNHAUSEB.
443. Use of Myth 641
444. Tennyson and Wagner . .542
445. Defects of Protestantism . 542
446. Our Church and her Sermons ....... 543
447. The Overture to Tannhauser 544
448. TheVenusberg 546
449. Close 647
First Act
450. Venus 548
451. Tannhauser and Venus 549
452. The Parting 550
453. Change to the Upper Earth 551
454. Pilgrims pass 552
455. Hunters pass .......... 553
xxiv CONTENTS.
Second Act.
Pap?
456. Elizabeth 554
457. The Landgrave 557
458. The Processional March . , 557
459. The Minstrel's Music ......... 558
4CO. Chivalry, the World, the Church 558
461. Tannhauser splits on the Rock ....... 560
462. To Rome 1 . 562
Third Act.
463. The Wayside Crucifix 563
464. Enter Tannhauser 565
465. Tannhauser's Confession and Death ...... 565
466. Philosophy of Tannhauser ........ 668
IX. LOHENOBW.
467. The Blood Royal or Real . ..... 669
468. The Depth of the Symbol and its Legend ..... 670
469. The Story of the Blood 571
470. Montsalvat and Lohengrin . .572
471. The Swan Legend and Elsa 573
472. Lohengrin Prelude 573
473. The Conception of " Lohengrin " analysed ..... 574
474. Analysis of Prelude * . . 576
First Act.
9
475. By the Scheldt 678
476. Enter the King . 679
477. Enter Elsa 580
478. Will he come ? 582
479. The Swan and the Knight 582
480. Surgit Amare Aliquid 584
481. The Duel 684
482. The Close of Act I. . 585
CONTENTS. xiv
Second Act.
Page
483. Ortrnd and Telramund 586
484. Elsa sings 587
485. Latet Anguis >.... 588
486. The Morning comes . . ..... 589
487. The Crowd assembles 590
488. Conspiracy 591
489. Enter Pages 591
490. Treachery 592
491. Poison instilled 594
Third Act.
492. Introduction to Act HL 594
493. The Bridal Chorus 595
494. Vie Intime ........... 596
495. Only a Woman ! 597
496. What 's in a Name 598
497. An exceeding Bitter Cry 599
498. Murder! COO
499. The King in Council 601
600. Enter Elsa 602
501. " I am Lohengrin " 603
602. The Swan ! The Swaa I 604
603. Exit Lohengrin . . . 605
504. Conclusion and Summary . 605
X. INTEBLCDE ON PHENOMENAL PLATERS.
505. The First Men 607
506. Lhzt and Piano Manufacture . 608
XI. LISZT.
607. Who has heard Liszt? ........ 609
508. Liszt embodies an Epoch . . . . . . . . 610
509. 1811. The Comet Tear ........ 611
510. "Learn the Piano" 612
511. Character . 612
xxvi CONTENTS.
Page
512. The Wherewithal 613
513. The Wide, Wide World 614
514. Many Masters .......... 614
515. First Appearances ......... 615
516. The Kiss of Beethoven 616
517. Cherubim and Liszt 617
518. Prodigious 617
519. George IV. and Liazt 618
520. A Change 619
521. Death of his Father . 620
522. Care of his Mother . 620
523. Unsettled Conditions . . 621
524. A Female Form I 622
525. Love and Grief 623
526. " Death of Young Liszt " 624
527. Revolution and Resurrection ....... 624
528. Paganini and the Age 625
529. Liszt withdraws Himself 628
530. Liszt and Thalberg 628
531. Reaction 629
532. Liszt and de Lamenuais ......... 629
533. The Mission of Art 630
534. Liszt and Chopin 630
535. Liszt on Chopin "... 632
536. The Elements of the Music of the Future 632
537. Liszt and the Beggars 634
538. The Dignity of Artists 636
539. Liszt, Czar Nicholas, and Louise Philippe 637
540. Liszt and George Sand 638
541. The Countess D'Agoult ......... 638
542. "Liszt or the Devil" 639
543. Liszt's Challenge to Milan 640
544. Disillusion 641
545. Italy, Austria, Russia . . . 642
646. Beethoven's Statue 643
547. Liszt's Princely Munificence 643
548. Dejection and Revival ......... 644
549. Wagner 644
550. Liszt at Seventy-two ....... i , 645
CONTENTS. xxvn
A Leaf from my Diary.
Page
651. I enter the Villa d'Este . 646
652. Kind Enquiries 647
553. A Glorious View 649
554. Into the Garden . 650
555. A Chat on Bells 651
556. Liszt plays to Me 652
557. Abbate and II Reverendo 654
558. Anecdotes 655
659. Liszt on Richter, Meyerbeer, Wagner, and Mendelssohn . 657
560. Paganini and Bottesini, &c 660
561. Billow, Rubinstein, and Mediocrities ...... 661
562. Liszt speaks of Chopin . . . 661
563. Liszt plays Chopin to me 663
564. "I am too Old" 666
565. All Souls Day . . ' . . . . . . . .667
566. Liszt at Rome 668
567. Liszt on Rubinstein, Menter, \Virtz ...... 669
568. Liszt and the American Lady ....... 671
669. Good Night , ... 672
LIST- OF ILLUSTKATIONS.
Page
RICHARD WAGNER. ....'.... Frontispiece
FACSIMILE OF GARIBALDI'S HANDWRITING 104
CREMONA VIOLINS 256
VIOLIN SHAPES AND Bows . 272
Jfirst look,
EAELY DAYS
ffiwt Boolt,
EARLY DAYS.
that as
l.
BELF,
dull is
volume
let me
NORWOOD AND LONDON.
1846-18SO.
THIXK it was Lord Beaconsfield who said that
a man was usually interesting in proportion as
his talk ran upon what he was familiar with ; and
a man usually knew more about himself than about
anything else, he seldom failed to be tolerable if
his self-centred talk turned out to be unaffected
and sincere. To talk about one's self and to be
nevertheless possible. In the early pages of this
I shall have to do the first to a considerable extent ;
hope to avoid the second.
1 *
4 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
My Musical Life is a companion volume to Music
and Morals. That book made me many
2.
"MCSIC AND friends, and, I Lope, few enemies. The
public was kind, and the publishers were
liberal. Music and Morals is now (1883) in its 12th
edition.
Music is not the business of my life, but it remains
its sweetest recreation; and there is one opinion which
used to be widely held by my friends in the old days,
and to which I subscribed for many years. Nature,
they often said, intended me for a violinist. In fact,
my musical life starts from the violin; and, " Stradi-
vario duce " Stradivarius leading the way I feel in-
spired, " after long years," to retrace with a certain
keen pleasure these labyrinthine passages of Musical
Memory.
There is something about the shape of a violin its
curves, its physiognomy, its smiling and genial | 's
which seems to invite and welcome inspection and
handling.
TARISIO, the Italian carpenter, came under this fasci-
nation to good purpose. He began by mending old
fiddles; he played himself a little; he got
A
more enamoured of these mysterious, lifeless
TARISIO.
yet living companions of his solitude, until he
began to (< trade in fiddles/'
TAEISIO. 5
At tlie beginning of tins century, hidden away in old
Italian convents and wayside inns, lay the masterpieces of
the AMATI, STRADIVARIUS, the GUARNERII, and BERGONZI,
almost unknown and little valued. But TARISIO'S eye was
getting cultivated. He was learning to know a fiddle when
he saw it.
" Your violino, signor, requires mending ? " says the
itinerant pedlar, as he salutes some monk or padre known
to be connected with the sacristy or choir of Pisa., Florence,
Milan. " I can mend it."
Out comes the Stradivarius, with a loose bar or a split
rib, and sounding abominably.
" Dio mio ! " says TARISIO, " and all the blessed saints !
but your violiuo is in a bad way. My respected father is
prayed to try one that I have, in perfect and beautiful
accord and repair; and permit me to mend this worn-out
machine."
And TARISIO, whipping a shining, clean instrument out of
his bag, hands it to the monk, who eyes it and is for trying
it. He tries it ; it goes soft and sweet, though not loud and
wheezy, like the battered old Strad. TARISIO clutches his
treasure.
The next day back comes the pedlar to the cloister, is
shown up to the padre, whom he finds scraping away on
his loan fiddle.
"But," he exclaims, "you have lent me a beautiful
violino, and in perfect order.'*
6 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
" Ah ! if the father would accept from me a small favour/'
says the cunning TARISIO.
" And what is that ? "
" To keep the violino that suits him so well, and I
will take in exchange the old machine which is worn
out, but with my skill I shall still make something
of it ! "
A glass of good wine, or a lemonade, or black coffee,
clinches the bargain. Off goes TARISIO, having parted with
a characterless German fiddle sweet and easy-going and
"looking nice," and worth now about 5 in perfect order,
no doubt, and having secured one of those gems of
Cremona which now run into 3CO. Violin-collecting
became the passion of TARISIO'S life. The story has been
told by MR. CHARLES READE, and all the fiddle-world knows
how TARISIO came to Paris with a batch of old instruments,
and was taken up by CHANOT and VUILLAUME, through
whose hands passed nearly every one of those chefs-d'oeuvre
recovered by TARISIO in his wanderings, which now are so
eagerly contended for by English and American millionaires,
whenever they happen to get into the market.
I have heard of a mania for snuff-boxes it was old
LABLACHE'S hobby. There are your china-maniacs, and
your picture-maniacs, and your old-print connoisseurs
who only look at the margin, and your old-book-
hunters who only glance at the title-page and edition,
and your coin-collectors, and your gem-collectors, who
FIDDLE SHOPS. ' 7
are always being taken in; but for downright fanaticism
and " gone-cooniness," if I may invent the word, com-
mend me to your violin-maniac. He who once comes
under that spell, goes down to the grave with a disordered
mind.
I said that I was, perhaps, intended for a violinist by
nature. I can understand TARISIO'S passion, though I never
followed out that particular branch of it which
4.
FIDDLB led him to collect, repair, and sell. I could
not buy violins the prices have risen since
the days of the Italian pedlar. I could not cheat people
out of them ; the world was too knowing for that, and
then I was too virtuous. I could not " travel " in violins.
It was not my vocation ; and one may in these days go
far and get little for it is now about as easy to find a
STRADIVARIUS as a CORREGGIO. But long before I had
ever touched a violin I was fascinated with its appear-
ance. In driving up to town as a child when, standing
up in the carriage, I could just look out of the window
certain fiddle shops hung with mighty rows of violoncellos
attracted my attention. I had dreams of these large editions
these patriarchs of the violin, as they seemed to me.
I compared them in my mind with the smaller tenors and
violins. I dreamed about their brown, big, dusty bodies
and affable good-natured-looking heads and grinning f ^ 's.
These violin shops were the great points watched for on each
8 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
journey up to London from Norwood, where I spent my
early days.
"We passed through Kennington. Sometimes we used to
stop at a friend's house overlooking the common. He was
old, quaint, and musical. His name was DR.
5.
DR. MAITLAND the celebrated author of The Dark
Ayes. An organ, with black keys where the
piano's are white, and white where the piano's are black,
stood in the hall. This instrument was atrociously out of
tune, but I used always to pump it full of wind whenever
I got the chance, and let off as many of the discordant
pipes as possible before I could be stopped. The old
gentleman had a fiddle, and a couple of friends used some-
times to look in and bring theirs, and they played HASSE'S
and CORELLI'S trios. I remember at that early age dis-
covering the rudiments of the then famous JULLIEN'S
" Bridal Waltz '' in a movement of old HASSE. Considering
the great dearth of respectable violin music for beginners,
I have often wondered why those simple and severe
gigues and sarabands are not more often utilised. In any
sale of old music, or at second-hand music-shops, certain
neatly-bound, though time-worn and time-honoured "sets,"
can still be picked up. Though stiff and formal, as it were,
with starched frills and periwigs and powder, what richness
of idea, what elegant form, what severe development ! Men
were feeling their way into the paradise of modern music ;
THE FIRST TIME. 9
but all was new to them ; they do not disguise it, the naive
delight in effects repeated again and again with consummate
gravity and gusto, because they were new, the placid content-
ment with a simple flowing bit of melody, and the frequent
employment of the perfect cadence, in season and out of
season, reminding one that only 333 years had passed away
since Monteverde had laid the foundation of modern music
by that famous discovery.*
To a blase world it is refreshing to go back and keep
company with those old pioneers of art, and realise sympa-
thetically with them the joy of doing a thing for
THE FIKST the first time. The first time ! What heights
and depths are there in those three short mono-
syllables ! The first time your soul has thrilled to eloquence,
the first time a poetical thought has kindled you, the first
time you noticed the charm of a woman's society, the first
time your pulses quickened at her approach, the first time
you found a congenial friend, the first time you perceived in
colour and sound something which went beyond the eye or
the ear and became the interpreter of the soul. The joy of
the explorer as he sails into an unknown sea, the ecstasy
of the astronomer as a new planet floats into the telescope,
the thrill of the experimentalist who combines with a new
result substances which from the beginning of time have
never been thus brought together, the glow of the historian
* See Music and Morals, Second Book, " From Ambrose to Handel."
10 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
when, after poring over his facts, the meaning of them
dawns upon him, and a theory is born once and for ever
which is destined to introduce order and meaning into what
before was chaos !
Youth is the great season of surprises, as it certainly is of
delights. There never were such buttercup fields and straw-
7. berry ices as in the days of my childhood. Men
TUB GREAT try to make hay now. but it is poor work ; and
EXHIBITION * *
OF 1851. as f or the modern ices, they are either frozen
amiss or ill-mixed. They are not good enough for me, who
can remember what they were in the Exhibition of 1851.
One of my keenest musical impressions is connected with
that marvellous show. I shall never see such another. As
I stood in the gallery of the great crystal transept and
looked down upon a spectacle such has been witnessed since,
but had never before been seen, a feeling of intoxication
there is no other word for it came over me. That moving
thronging mass of gaily-dressed people below, fading away
into the distance, the sunshine that filled that opaline
building, the glittering sheen reflected from a million facets
as of diamonds, flecking with rainbow hues the vapours
which dimmed the long perspective. The murmur of that
echoing, moving throng beneath, is still in my ears ; it
mingles with the splashing of fountains that rose from vast
shining basins and radiant cones amid tropical foliage. The
Oriental stalls, the hangings, the gaudy red flags white
A TRANCE. 11
lettered, the decorated produce of many Nations arranged
in what appeared to me to be magic grottoes of marvellous
wealth and beauty ; the snowy statues, many of them
colossal, standing out in bold relief against green palms, or
Eastern cloth of gold, or crimson and azure tapestries all
this rises before me as I write.
I remember perfectly well falling into a kind of dream as
I leant over the painted iron balcony and looked down on
Ibis splendid vista. The silver- bell-like tones of
an Erard it was the 1.030 sruinea piano pierced
A TRANCE.
through the human hum, and noise of splashing
waters, but it Avas a long way off. Suddenly, in the adjoin-
ing gallery, the large organ broke out with a blare of
trumpets that thrilled and riveted me with an inconceivable
emotion. I knew not then what those opening bars were.
Evidently something martial, festal, jubilant, and full
of triumph. I listened and held my breath to hear
MENDELSSOHN'S " Wedding March " for the first time, and
not know it ! To hear it when half the people present
had never heard of MENDELSSOHN, three years after his
death, and when not one in a hundred could have told
me what was being played that is an experience I shall
never forget. As successive waves of fresh inexhaustible
inspiration flowed on, vibrating through the building without
a check or a pause, the peculiar Mendelssohnian spaces of
cantabile melody alternating as they do in that march with
12 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
the passionate and almost fierce decision of the chief pro-
cessional theme, I stood riveted, bathed in the sound as m
an element. I felt ready to melt into those harmonious yet
turbulent waves and float away upon the tides of " Music's
golden sea setting towards Eternity." The angel of TENNY-
SON'S Vision might have stood by me whispering,
And thou listenest the lordly music flowing from the illimitable years.
Someone called me, so I was told afterwards, but I did not
hear. They supposed that I was following, they went on,
and were soon lost in the crowd. Presently one came back
and touched me, but I t did not feel. I could not be roused,
my soul was living apart from my body. When the music
ceased the spell slowly dissolved, and I was led away still
half in dreamland. For long years afterwards the " Wedding
March/' which is now considered banale and clap -trap by
the advanced school, affected me strangely. Its power over
me has almost entirely ceased. It is a memory now more
than a realisation
eheu ! fugaces, Posthume,
Posthume, labuutur anni
This was in 1851 ; but it must have been about the year
1846 that I was taken up to a concert at Exeter
M
THE Hall, and heard there for the first time what
K MIDSUMMEB .
NIGHT'S seemed to me to be music or unearthly sweetness.
AM ' The room was crowded. I was far behind. I
could only see the fiddle-sticks of the band in the distance.
THE "MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM." 13
Four long-drawn-out tender wails on the wind rising, rising ;
then a soft, rapid, flickering kind of sound, high up in the
treble clef, broke from a multitude of fiddles, ever growing
in complexity as the two fiddles at each desk divided the
harmonies amongst them, pausing as the deep melodious
breathing of wind instruments suspended in heavy slumbrous
sighs their restless agitation, then recommencing till a
climax was reached, and the whole band broke in with that
magnificent subject which marks the first complete and
satisfying period of musical solution in the overture to the
" Midsummer Night's Dream ! "
I was at once affected as I had never before been. I did
not know then that it was the MENDELSSOHN mania that had
come upon me. It seized upon the whole musical world of
forty years ago, and discoloured the taste and judgment of
those affected, for every other composer. The epidemic
lasted for about twenty years at its height ; declined rather
uddenly with the growing appreciation of SCHUMANN, the
tardy recognition of SPOHR, and the revival of SCHUBERT,
receiving its quietus of course with the triumph of WAGNER.
People now " place " MENDELSSOHN, then they worshipped
him. Can I forget the heavenly close of that dream over-
ture that day ? MR. WILLY that capital chef d'orchestre,
so strict, so true, so sympathetic was leading the band.
The enchanting master, who was to pass away in the fol-
lowing year, FELIX MENDELSSOHN, was still alive. He might
have been in London at the time. It was the very year he
U NORWOOD AND LONDON.
conducted the " Elijah " at Birmingham. His works, at
the moment when he was to be taken from us for ever, were
being played in all the concert rooms in London ; the
D Minor and C Minor trios, his pianoforte concertos, the
" Ruy Bias/' the overture to the "Midsummer Night's
Dream." That day the band played with a freshness and
sympathy which made their own intense delight contagious.
I can never hear the heavenly sleep-music at the close of
the overture which some dull people declare is borrowed
from Weber without the memory of those indescribable
sensations carrying me back to that day in Exeter Hall.
When I heard the "Wedding March" later in 1851, without
knowing whose or what it was, I had the same feeling. My
10. spirit unconsciously saluted the genius who was
E destined to rule mv musical aspirations for
MENDELSSOHN
SPELL, nearly thirty years. I was no doubt very young
and ignorant and inexperienced. I was scraping HASSE,
CORELLI, and modern opera tunes on a very bad fiddle at
home. " La Pluie des Perles " and " La Tenerezza/' and
such-like pianoforte trifles of the period, seemed to me
delicious, and HENRI HERZ'S noisy firework-variations
struck me as sublime. When STERNDALE BENNETT sat
down to the piano one day and played two or three of
the " Songs without Words/' then great novelties, my
perception failed me. I thought nothing of them nor of
him. It was some years before I learned to prefer such
THE YEAR 1847. 15
pianoforte masterpieces to the showy and ephemeral schools
of CZERNY, HERZ, and THALBERG. Why I was so instantly
won by the overture to the " Midsummer Night's Dream/'
and so insensible at first to the " Songs without Words/' is
to me a riddle. After the first hearing of the overture I
became a confirmed Mendelssohnian. I next heard " I
would that my love/' sung by two boys at the Brighton
College, and I could listen to nothing else that night.
la 1847 I was staying at a house where the overture to
the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was played as a pianoforte
duet. It is arranged a quatre mains by MEN-
TOE TEAK DELSSOHN himself. Every evening it was my
1 &A.7
unspeakable delight to listen to it. The world
at large was not then much excited about MENDELSSOHN
no one spoke of him out of certain musical cliques, and
I was not in the cliques but my curiosity was intensely
excited ; every scrap of news about him I fell upon eagerly.
In those days I never read the papers. I never knew
when MENDELSSOHN was in England ; no one ever told
me about the " Elijah " at Birmingham in 1846. No
one took me to see or hear MENDELSSOHN when he was
playing and conducting in London. Everything in this
world seems unimportant until all is too late. The angels
come in and the angels go out, but we never know them
until they have withdrawn themselves from us. Then we look
up to heaven, and our eyes fill with burning bitter tears.
16 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
One night, just as the last notes of that overture had
been struck on the piano, the door opened it was at
12. Guildford someone came in with a newspaper
MEN- ^ "MENDELSSOHN is dead." "Dead!" echoed
IEL.SSOII^ 8
DEATH, the girl who had been playing the treble, her
hand falling from the white keys as though suddenly
paralysed " dead ! " She rose from the piano and walked
to the other end of the room. I was watching her. I had
desolate thoughts of my own. " I shall never see him
now/' I thought; "he will make no more music/' The
girl came back. She was silent and agitated; she could
not control her emotion, and she left the room hurriedly.
Others were there, but none seemed to feel it as she did,
or as I did. It was news to them; to us it was a calamitous,
irreparable, personal loss. Boys don't weep on these occa-
sions, but I had my own thoughts, and I could understand
another's.
From that day MENDELSSOHN became my patron saint in
music. I used to see his face in dreams, transfigured,
13. splendid with inspired thought. He would come
MY VISIONS t o me an <j smile, and speak kind words. I
DELSSOHN. seemed then to have known him long, his step
was familiar, the long tapering fingers of his beautiful
white hand that perfect hand of which MB. CIIAPPELL has
an exact cast his slight figure, his wavy, sunny hair, his
noble forehead, his large gentle eyes beaming with a certain
MENDELSSOHN. 17
child-like fondness, full of unconscious simplicity, flashing
at times with a fire so intense that it seemed to burn into
the soul of every man in the orchestra. It was matter of
common remark that when MENDELSSOHN conducted a
perfectly sympathetic band, he would at times almost cease
to move the baton. Then, with his head a little on one
side, himself listening like one entranced, his spirit alone
seemed to sway the musicians, who followed every inflexion
vibrating to every pulse of his meaning, as though he had
placed them under some strange kind of magnetic control.
This recurrent vision of my companionship with MEN-
DELSSOHN the impossibility of believing him to be dead,
our frequent and strange meeting in the land of dreams
remains one of the sweetest illusions of my early youth.
I never meet him now. I never see him. He never
comes to me. Whenever I think of him, I think not of
the living MENDELSSOHN of my dreams, but of the placid
head lying pillowed in its last sleep as sketched by his
friend, and since engraved. The summer wind seems stir-
ring amongst the branches that wave close by, and
underneath are written those words from the " Elijah "
which he selected and set, not long before his death, to the
divinest music, "And after the fire a still small voice,
' And in that still voice onward came the Lord ' . . ."
*****
As my ideas group themselves most naturally about my
favourite instrument the violin I may as welj resume
2
18 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
the thread of my narrative in connection with my earliest
violin recollections. I became possessed, at the
NURSERY age of six years, of a small red eighteenpenny
fiddle and stick, with that flimsy bow and those
thready strings, which are made apparently only to snap,
even as the fiddle is made only to smash. I thus early
became familiar with the idol of niy youth. But familiarity
did not breed contempt. I proceeded to elicit from the red
eighteenpenny all it had to give ; and when I had done with
it, my nurse removed the belly, and found it made an
admirable dust-pan or wooden shovel for cinders, and,
finally, excellent firewood. Many went that way, without
my passion for toy fiddles suffering the least decline; nay,
it rather grew by that it (and the fire) fed on. It may not
be superfluous to add that I had by this time found means
to make the flimsiest strings yield up sounds which I need
not here characterise, and to such purpose that it became
a question of some interest how long such sounds could be
endured by the human ear. I do not mean my own. All
violinists, including infants on eighteenpennies, admit that
to their own ear the sounds produced are nothing but
delightful ; it is only those who do not make them who
complain. As it seemed unlikely that my studies on the
violin would stop, it became expedient that they should be
directed. A full-sized violin was procured me. I have
every reason to believe it was one of the worst fiddles I
ever saw.
FIRST LESSONS. 19
I had played many times with much applause, holding a.
full-sized violin between my knees. I was about eight years
old when the services of the local organist a
Ivb
FIRST MR. INGRAM, of Norwood were called in. His
skill on the violin was not great, but it was
enough for me; too much, indeed, for he insisted on my
holding the violin up to my chin. The fact is, he could
not play it in any other position himself, so how could
he teach me ? Of course the instrument was a great deal
too large ; but I strained and stretched until I got it up ;
for as it would not grow down to me, I had to grow up
to it. ' And here I glance at the crucial question, Ought
young children to begin upon small-sized violins? All
makers say " Yes " ; naturally, for they supply the new
violins of all sizes. But I emphatically say " No." The
sooner the child gets accustomed to the right violin intervals
the better; the small violins merely present him with a
series of wrong distances, which he has successively to
unlearn. It is bad enough if in after years he learns the
violoncello or tenor. Few violinists survive that ordeal, and
most people who take to the tenor or 'cello after playing the
violin keep to it. Either they have not been successful on
the violin, or they hope to become so on its larger though
less brilliant relation ; but they have a perfectly true instinct
that it is difficult to excel on both, because of the intervals.
Yet, in the face of this, you put a series of violins of
different sizes into the pupil's hand, on the ground that,
2 *
20 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
as his hand enlarges with years, the enlarged key-board
suit his fingers better; but that is not the way the brain
works the brain learns intervals. It does not trouble itself
about the size of the fingers that have got to stretch them.
A child of even seven or eight can stretch most of the ordi-
nary intervals on a full-sized violin finger-board. He may
not be able to hold the violin to his chin ; but he can learn
his scales and pick out tunes, sitting on a stool and holding
his instrument like a violoncello. Before the age of eight
I found no difficulty in doing this. But the greater the
difficulty the better the practice. The tendons cannot be
too much stretched short of spraining and breaking. Mere
aching is to be made no account of; the muscles can hardly
be too much worked. A child will soon gain surprising
agility, even on a large finger-board. Avoid the hateful
figured slip of paper that used to be pasted on violin
finger-boards in my youth, with round dots for the fingers.
I remember tearing mine off in a fit of uncontrollable
irritation. I found it very difficult, with the use of my
eyes, to put my fingers on the dots, and even then the
note was not always in tune, for of course the dot might
be covered in a dozen ways by the finger-tips, and a hair's
breadth one way or the other would vary the note. But the
principle is vicious. A violin player's eyes have no more
business with his fingers than a billiard player's eyes have
with his cue. He looks at the ball, and the musician, if he
looks at anything, should look at the notes, or at his
EARLY PRACTICE. 21
audience, or he can shut his eyes if he likes. It is hia
ears, not his eyes, have to do with his fingers.
I was about eight years old. My musical studies were
systematic, if not well directed. Every morning for two
hours I practised scales and various tunes at a
16.
EARLY double desk, my father on one side and I on
the other. We played the most deplorable
arrangements, and we made the most detestable noise. We
played BEETHOVEN'S overture to "Prometheus," arranged
for two fiddles, CALLCOTT'S German melodies with piano-
forte accompaniment, and without the violoncello part,
and" CORELLI'S trios also without the third instrument.
I had somehow ceased to take lessons now. My father's
knowledge of violin playing was exactly' on a level with my
own ; his skill, he modestly owned, was even less, but had
it not been for him I never should have played at all. Our
method was simple. We sat for two hours after breakfast
and scraped. In the evening, with the addition of the
piano, we scraped again anything we could get hold of
and we did get hold of odd things : LOCKE'S music to
" Macbeth/' old quadrilles, the " Battle of Prague/' " God
save the Emperor," and the " Huntsman's Chorus." I con-
fess I hated the practising, it was simple drudgery and put
it in what way you will, the early stage of violin playing is
drudgery but it must be gone through with. And then
I had my hours of relaxation. I used to walk up and down
22 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
the lawn in our garden playing tunes in my own fashion.
I got very much at home on the finger-board, and that is the
grand thing after all. No one ever gets at home there who
has not begun young not so young as I began, but at least
under the age of twelve. I was soon considered an infant
phenomenon on the violin, stood on tables, and was trotted
out at parties, and I thus early got over all shyness at
playing in public.
About this time I received a decided impulse from hearing
a little girl, aged six, play on the violin exquisitely, and, as
it seemed to me, prodigiously. There were
ANEW three sisters, named TURNER; the eldest was
only fifteen : two played the harp, and the
youngest, a pretty child of six, played the violin. She
had one of those miniature instruments I believe a real
Cremona which can still occasionally be picked up at old
violin shops. I remember the enthusiasm she created in
some variations on airs from " Sonuambula," an opera in
which JENNY LIND was making furor at the time in London.
The poor little violinist was recalled again and again. It
was past eleven, and as she came on in her little pink
dress just down to her knees holding her tiny fiddle
I recollect her raising it to her chin to begin again, but her
little head lay so wearily on one side, and she looked so tired
that her acute father came forward, perceiving that the
child was quite worn out, drew her away, and in a few words
SAINTON HILL PIATTI COOPER. 23
asked the people to let her off, adding that she ought to
have been in bed an hour ago. I went home and tried
those variations. I could not play them, but her playing of
them gave me a new start. The finest lesson a young
player can have is to hear good playing. So my father
thought. We had both come to a kind of standstill in our
music. We seemed, as he expressed it, to have stuck.
It now happily occurred to him to subscribe to certain
quartet concerts then announced to take place at Willis's
Rooms. In those days such things were novelties. With
the exception of ELLA'S Musical Union, then in its early
days, I believe no public quartets had been given in London,
except perhaps as a rare feature in some chamber concert.
SAINTON and PIATTI were then in their prime. I remember
them as young men with their hair jet-black. My father
wrote to M. SAINTON and asked whether he could
lo.
SAINTON, admit me as a child half-price? M. SAINTON
PIATTI,
HILL, wrote back with the utmost politeness to say
that to make such a reduction was not in
accordance with their rule, but that under the circum-
stances he should be glad to conform to my father's wishes,
especially as my father's sacred office that of a clergyman
always inspired him with the greatest respect. Accordingly
I went. These were amongst the choicest performances
1 heard in my boyhood. Nor, in some respects, have they
ever been excelled in London since. What a quartet caste
24 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
that was ! SAINTOX, HILL, PIATTI, and COOPER. SAINTON,
full of fire, brilliancy, and delicacy. COOPER with more
tone, and a depth and passion which sometimes gave him
the advantage over his brilliant French rival ; but at the
end of each concert we were always left balancing the
merits of the two violinists, I inclining at times to
the Englishman's fervour and abandon, but won back by
the Frenchman's finish and execution. In SPOHH'S violin
duets each had an opportunity for the display of his peculiar
gift. Each was on his mettle ; each gave his own reading
to the same phrases in turn, and this friendly artistic
rivalry was to me intensely exciting. HILL was a splendid
tenor, full, round, and smooth in tone ; and of PIATTI,
prince of violoncellists, it is needless here to speak.
Willis's Rooms were never full on these occasions ; the
" Monday Populars " had not yet cultivated the public taste
up to chamber music of the classical sort. In that field
PROFESSOR ELLA, with his Musical Union, had hitherto
laboured alone. But everyone at Willis's Rooms was
appreciative. The players all seemed to feel the atmosphere
sympathetic and genial. Everyone played heartily, and
the artists were the very best that could be got.
At each concert some bright particular star appeared as a
soloist. I remember a fair-haired girl fragile
19
MDLLE. and apparently with no physique to commend
attention on a grand pianoforte in a large
MDLLE. CLAUSS. 25
room. She came in a light blue muslin dress; sat down
hurriedly, and tossed her curls back, looking straight up at
the ceiling, whilst her fingers ran quickly in a slight pre-
lude over the keys; then she plunged into a polonaise or
something of the kind; it might have been one of poor
CHOPIN'S; it probably was, for he was about that time the
rage, and quite in the last stage, dying of consumption in
London and Scotch drawing-rooms, catching fresh colds
every night, faultlessly attired in the miserable dress
clothes and exposed shirt-front of the period. General
attention had not then been called to his music, but about
that time it was beginning to be fashionable in London,
which in such matters tardily followed Paris, where CHOPIN
had long been adored. I have since been told that MDLLE.
CLAUSS afterwards SZAVARDY CLAUSS was cold and mecha-
nical. I only heard her that once, and that was at Willis's
Rooms, in, I believe, 1849. We did not think her cold
then. From the moment she sat down until she sprang
up with that same little flustered, uneasy manner which I
noticed on her entrance, our eyes were riveted upon her, and
we followed every bar and inflexion of the rapid execution.
She seemed to play her piece through as I have sometimes
heard RUBINSTEIN without taking breath, and we were
forced to hold ours : as the artists sometimes say of a
picture, " It is painted with one brush/' so MDLLE. CLAUSS,
never relaxed her mood or her grip ; she held her composer
and her audience absolutely fast until she had done with
26 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
both ; then she seemed to push both away like one eager to
escape.
On a certain afternoon there was neither solo pianist nor
violinist down on the programme, but a player on the contre-
basso was to occupy the vacant place. I remem-
ber my disappointment. Who is that tall, sallow-
BOTTESrNL
looking creature with black moustache and straight
hair, with long bony fingers, yet withal a comely hand, who
comes lugging a great double-bass with him? Someone
might have lifted it up for him ; but no, he carries it him-
self and hoists it lovingly on to the platform. He seems
familiar with its ways, and will allow no one to help him.
Why, there are SAINTON, HILL, PIATTI, and COOPER, all
coming on without their fiddles. They seem vastly interested
in this ungainly couple the man and the big bass. He
has no music. People behind me are standing up to get a
better sight of him, although he is tall enough in all con-
science. I had better stand up too ; they are standing
up in front of me, I shall see nothing ! so I stood on
a chair. The first curiosity over, we all sat down, and,
expecting little but a series of grunts, were astonished at
the outset at the ethereal notes lightly touched on the
three thick strings, harmonics of course, just for tuning.
But all seemed exquisitely in tune with the piano.
This man was BOTTESINI, then the latest novelty. How
he bewildered us by playing all sorts of melodies in flute-like
BOTTESINI. 27
harmonics, as though he had a hundred nightingales caged
in his double-bass ! Where he got his harmonic sequences
from ; how he hit the exact place with his long, sensitive,
ivory-looking fingers; how he swarmed up and down the
finger-board, holding it round the neck at times with the grip
of a giant, then, after eliciting a grumble of musical thunder,
darting up to the top and down again, with an expression
on his face that never seemed to alter, and his face always
calmly and rather grimly surveying the audience ; how his
bow moved with the rapidity of lightning, and his fingers
seemed, like Miss Kilmansegg's leg, to be a judicious com-
pound of clockwork and steam : all this, and more, is now
a matter of musical history, but it was new then. I heard
him play the " Carnival de Venice." I have heard him
play it and some three or four other solos since at intervals
of years. His stock seemed to me limited ; but when you
can make your fortune with half a dozen, or even a couple
of solos, why play more ? At one time lie travelled with
LAZARUS, the matchless clarionet player; and I shall long
remember the famous duet they invariably played, and
which was always encored. Then BOTTESINI was fond of
conducting and of composing. He got a good appointment
in Egypt, and I suppose got tired of going " around " playing
the same solos. I never wearied of his consummate grace
and finish, his fatal precision, his heavenly tone, his fine
taste. One sometimes yearned for a touch of human
imperfection, but he was like a dead shot : he never
28 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
missed what lie aimed at, and he never aimed at less than
perfection.
Another afternoon there came on a boy with a shock head
of light hair, who was received with a storm of applause.
He was about sixteen, and held a violin. His
THE BOY name was JOACHIM. He laid his head upon his
Cremona, lifted his bow arm, and plunged into
such a marvellous performance of BACH'S "Chaconne" as
was certainly never before heard in London. The boy
seemed to fall into a dream in listening to his own com-
plicated mechanism. He shook out the notes with the
utmost ease and fluency. It all seemed no trouble to him,
and left him quite free to contemplate the masterpiece which
he was busy in interpreting. MENDELSSOHN, after hearing
him play the same masterpiece on one occasion, caught
him in his arms and embraced him before the audience.
I heard few concerts, and those usually of a poor sort,
but I was ravenous for music, and each performance made
an indelible impression upon my mind. I re-
member the very rooms the "Horns" at
HULLAH.
Kennington, the dining-room at the Beulah Spa,
Upper Norwood, a school-room at Brixton, our own school-
room at Lower Norwood where MR. HULLAH looking (in
1846) very much as he does now (1883) used occasionally
to appear to superintend the classes on his then novel
JOHN HULLAHMISS DOLBY. 29
system. He usually, however, sent MR. MAY, a very nice-
looking young man, whom I have since met in London,
and who is now " the same age as other people/'
We used to trudge, my father, my sister, and self, through
the snow to these classes. It was not an unmixed delight,
like so many other things in this world that are so good
for us. I wore socks and shoes, and my legs were bare
to my knees. I invariably forgot my gloves, and my hands
and legs were always blue with cold. MR. HULLAII himself
was looked up to with a certain awe. He was a very great
and celebrated man, but his affability in speaking to my
father was surprising. I can remember his genial, kindly
face ; and his manner with children was quite gentle and
friendly, considering who he was. But withal he was very
business-like and systematic and would have no nonsense.
f
About this time I heard Miss DOLBY, then in her prime.
How she did sing " Bonny Dundee, " accompanying herself!
What a voice ! what a bonhomie ! Always the
true artiste, the estimable woman, the earnest
MISS DOLBY.
worker. She had deserved her popularity, and
retained her hold over the public longer than most singers.
For how many years was she without a rival in oratorio !
It would not be right to say that she " created '' " O rest
in the Lord/' but it is true to say that for years the song
was identified with her rendering of it, and that no subse-
quent singer has forsaken that rendering with any success.
30 NORWOOD AND LONDON,
Some have over-hurried it, and some have over-declaimed
it. I have heard it actually preached at the people an
inexpressibly offensive method ; but Miss DOLBY hit the
happy mean, with the truest perception of the right func-
tions of oratorio art. She seemed personally filled with
finely chastened but deep emotion, and she gave herself up
to the expression of it in the presence of others, but not at
them. She knew she was being over-heard and she expected
sympathy ; but she was not engaged in a propaganda, and
did not aim at forcing conviction.
When Miss DOLBY married M. SAINTON, the world of art
rejoiced over the union of two persons who had already
passed a considerable portion of their busy lives in the
service of the English people, and with that simple-minded
devotion to the highest interests of the musical art which
has done so much to raise the social status of musicians and
ennoble the cause of music in England.
About this time I heard JULLIEN'S band at the Surrey
Zoological Gardens. The siege of Gibraltar was going on
at night, with explosions and fireworks of incon-
Z4:.
MONS. ceivable splendour; the great cardboard ships
looked quite real to me they were blown to
pieces every evening and the fort, with the sentinels pacing
up and down on the ramparts, as large as life. The band
played in a covered alcove not far from the water's brink.
The effect on a summer's evening was delightful. JULLIEN'S
JULLIEN ERNST. 31
enormous white waistcoat and heavily gilt arm-chair made
a good centre. 1 can see his large, puffy, pale face and
black moustache now, as he lolled back exhausted in the
gorgeous fauteuil ; then sprang up, full of fire, patted the
solo cornet on the shoulder with " Pratiquez ! " I happened
to overhear him. " Pratiquez, il faut toujours pratiquez."
BOTTESINI also played there in the still summer evenings,
with magical effect, accompanied by JULLIEN'S band. Days
and nights of my childhood, what music ! what fireworks !
At this time JENNY LIND and ERNST were both in London ;
and LISZT, I believe, passed through like a meteor. I never
heard any of them in their prime, though I did
hear MADAME LIND-GOLDSCHMIDT sing the
ERNST.
" Ravens " at a concert years afterwards, and
it was ray privilege to hear ERNST before he had lost
his cunning, nor shall I ever hear his like again. He
played once at Her Majesty's Opera House, when the whole
assembly seemed to dream through a performance of the
" Hungarian Airs." The lightest whisper of the violin con-
trolled the house ; the magician hardly stirred his wand at
times, and no one could tell from the sound when he passed
from the up to the down bow in those long cantabile notes
which had such power to entrance me.
I heard ERNST later at Brighton. He played out of tune,
and I was told that he was so shaken in nerve, that playing
a BEETHOVEN quartet in private, and coming to a passage
32 NORWOOD AND LONDON.
of no great difficulty, which I have often scrambled through
with impunity, the great master laid down his fiddle and
declared himself unequal to the effort.
Great, deep-souled, weird magician of the Cremona ! I
can see thy pale, gaunt face even now ! those dark, haggard-
looking eyes, with the strange veiled fires, semi-mesmeric,
the wasted hands, so expressive and sensitive, the thin, lank
hair and emaciated form, yet with nothing demoniac about
thee like PAGANINI, from whom thou wast absolutely distinct.
No copy thou, thyself all thyself tender, sympathetic,
gentle as a child, suffering, always suffering; full of an
excessive sensibility ; full of charm ; irresistible and fascinat-
ing beyond words ! Thy Cremona should have been buried
with thee. It has fallen into other hands. I see it every
season in the concert-room: MADAME NORMAN-NKRUDA plays
it. I know she is an admirable artist. I do not hear thy
Cremona; its voice has gone out with thee, its soul has
passed with thine.
In the night I hear it under the stars, when the moon is
low, and I see the dark ridges of the clover hills, and rabbits
and hares, black against the paler sky, pausing to feed or
crouching to listen to the voices of the night.
Alone in the autumn woods, when through the shivering
trees I see the angry yellow streaks of the sunset, and the
dead leaves fall across a sky that threatens storm.
SIVOEICHATTEETON. 33
By the sea, when the cold mists rise, and hollow murmurs,
like the low wail of lost spirits, rush along the beach.
In some still valley in the South, in midsummer, the slate-
coloured moth on the rock flashes suddenly into crimson and
takes wing ; the bright-eyed lizard darts timorously, and the
singing of the grasshopper never ceases in the long grass ;
the air is heavy and slumberous with insect life and tho
breath of flowers. I can see the blue sky intense blue,
mirrored in the lake and a bird floats mirrored in the blue,
and over the shining water comes the sound, breaking the
singing silences of nature : such things are in our dreams !
It is thus only I can hear again the spirit voice of thy
Cremona, dead master, but not at St. James's Hall; DO
longer in the crowded haunts of men as once. Its body only
is there : its soul was the very soul of the master who has
passed to where the chiming is " after the chiming of the
eternal spheres/'
I heard other great players : Sivom, delicate, refined, with
a perfect command of his instrument a pupil of PAGANINI'S,
playing all his pieces, and probably no more like
SIVOKI, him than a Roman candle is like a meteor;
' CHATTERTON on the harp, a thankless instrument,
without variety and never in tune, whose depths are quickly
sounded an arpeggio, a few harmonics, a few full glorious
3
34 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
chords, an ethereal whispering, and da capo \ PIATTI on the
violoncello a truly disembodied violoncello so pure and
free from catgut and rosin came the sound ; and pianists
innumerable in later days. But if, looking back and up to
the present hour, I am asked to name off-hand the greatest
players the very greatest I have heard I say at once
ERNST, LISZT, RUBINSTEIN.
II.
BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
1850-1356.
FROM such heights I am loth to return to my own insig-
nificant doings, but they happen to supply me with the
o framework for my present meditations: they are,
MY SECOND in fact, the pegs on which 1 have chosen to hang
my thoughts. I was at a complete standstill : I
sorely needed instruction. I went to the seaside for my
health. One day, in the morning, I entered the concert
room of the town hall at Margate. It was empty, but on a
platform at the farther end, half a dozen musicians were
rehearsing. One sat up at a front desk and seemed to be
leading on the violin. As they paused, I walked straight
up to him. I was about twelve then.
MY SECOND MASTER. 35
" Please, sir/' I began rather nervously, " do you teach
the violin ? "
He looked round rather surprised, but in another moment
he smiled kindly, and said :
" Why, yes at least," he added, " that depends. Do you
mean you want to learn ? "
" That 's it," I said, " I have learned a little. Will you
teach me ? "
t( Wait a bit. I must finish here first, and then I '11
come down to you. Can. you wait ? " he added, cheerily.
I had been terribly nervous when I began to ask him, but
now I felt my heart beating with joy.
" Oh yes/' I said, " I can wait ! " and I waited and heard
them play, and watched every motion of one whom I already
looked upon as my master.
And he became my master my first real master. Good,
patient MR. DEVONPOBT ! I took to him, and he took to me
at once. He got me to unlearn all my slovenly ways, taught
me how to hold my fiddle and how to finger and how to bow.
It seems I did everything wrong. He used to write out
KREUTZER'S early exercises, over his breakfast, and bring them
to me all blotted, in pen and ink, and actually got into
disgrace, so he said, with his landlady, for inking the table-
cloth ! That seemed to me heroic ; but who would not have
mastered the crabbed bowing, the ups and downs and
staccatos, and slur two and bow one, and slur three and bow
one, and slur two and two, after that ! And I did my best,
3 * '
36 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
though not to his satisfaction; but he never measured his
time with me, and he had an indefinitely sweet way with
him which won me greatly, and made me love my violin a
five-pound VUILHAUME copy of STRADIVARIUS, crude in tone
more than ever.
When I left the sea, I lost my master. I never saw him
again. If he is alive now, and these lines should chance to
meet his eye, I will join hands with him across the years.
"Why should he not be alive ? HULLAH and SAINTON and
PIATTI andM B DOLBY and M K LiND-GoLDSCHMiDT, and I know
not how many more of his contemporaries, and my elders,
are alive. Only there was a sadness and delicacy about that
pale diaphanous face, its hectic flush, its light hair, and slight
fringe of moustache ; I can remember it so well ; and I must
own, too, there was a little cough, which makes me fear that
DEVONPORT was not destined to live long. Someone remarked
it at the time, but I thought nothing of it then.
I made a great stride under DEVONPORT, and my next
master, whom I disliked exceedingly, was a young Pole,
LAPINSKI, who could not speak a word of English,
28. r
MY THIKD Our lessons were very dull. He taught me little,
but he taught me something the art of making
my fingers ache the great art, according to JOACHIM.
My time with him was pure drudgery, unrelieved by a
single glow of pleasure, or gleam of recreation ; he was a
dogged and hard task-master, knew exactly what he meant.
THE MYSTERY OF TEACHING. 87
and was utterly indifferent to the likes and dislikes of his
pupil the very opposite to DEVONPORT, whom in six weeks I
got positively to love. In music, you learn more in a week
from a sympathetic teacher, or at least from someone who is
so to you, than from another, however excellent, in a month.
You will make no progress if he can give you no impulse.
What a mystery lies in that word " teaching*' ! One will
constrain you irresistibly, and another shall not be able to
29. persuade you. One will kindle you with an
ambition that aspires to what the day before
MYSTERY OF *
TEACHING, seemed inaccessible heights, whilst another will
labour in vain to stir your sluggish mood to cope with the
smallest obstacle. The reciprocal relation is too often for-
gotten. It is assumed that any good master or mistress will
suit any willing pupil. Not at all any more than A can
mesmerise B, who goes into a trance immediately on the
appearance of C. All personal relations, and teaching rela-
tions are intensely personal, have to do with subtle con-
ditions unexplored but inexorable and instantly perceived.
The soul puts out, as it were, its invisible antennae, knowing
the soul that is kindred to itself. I do not want to be told
whether you can teach me anything. I know you cannot.
I will not learn from you what I must learn from another ;
what he will be bound to teach me. All you may have to
say may be good and true, but it is a little impertinent anrl
out of place. You spoil the truth. You mar the beauty,
33 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
not hear these things from you ; you spoil nature ;
you wither art ; you are not for me, and I am not for you
" Let us go hence, my songs she will not hear."
My next master was OURY. I fell in with him at Brighton
when I was about sixteen. He had travelled with PAGANINI
80. and was a consummate violinist himself. He
MY LAST was a s h or ^ angry-looking, stoutly-built little
OLRY. man. Genial with those who were sympathetic
to him, and sharp, savage, and sarcastic with others he
made many enemies, and was unscrupulous in his language.
I found he had been unlucky, and I hardly wonder at it ;
for a man more uncertain, unstable, and capricious in temper
I never met but he was an exquisite player ; his fingers
were thick and plump, his hand was fat and short, not
unlike that of poor JAELL, the late pianist. How he could
stop his intervals in tune and execute passages of exceeding
delicacy with such hands was a mystery to me ; but JAELL
did things even more amazing with his stretching the most
impossible intervals, and bowling his fat hands up and down
the key-board like a couple of galvanised balls.
I was at this time about sixteen and a member of the
Brighton Symphony Society. We played the symphonies of
the old masters to not very critical audiences in the Pavilion,
and I have also played in the Brighton Town Hall. It was
at these meetings I first fell in with OURY.
I noticed a little group in the ante-room on one of the
OURY. 39
rehearsal nights; they were chattering round a thickset
crotchety-looking little man and trying to persuade him to
do something. He held his fiddle, but would not easily
yield to their entreaties. They were asking him to play.
At last he raised his Cremona to his chin and began to
improvise. What fancy and delicacy and execution ! what
refinement ! His peculiar gift lay not only in a full round
tone, but in the musical " embroideries " the long flourishes,
the torrents of multitudinous notes ranging all over the
instrument. I can liken those astonishing violin passages to
nothing but the elaborate embroidery of little notes which
in CHOPIN'S music are spangled in tiny type all round the
subject, which is in large type. When OURY was in a good
humour he would gratify us in this way, and then stop
abruptly, and nothing after that would induce him to play
another note. He had the fine large style of the DE BEEIOT
school, combined with a dash of the brilliant and romantic
PAGANINI, and the most exquisite taste of his own. In
those days DE BERIOT'S music reigned supreme in the
concert-room until the appearance of PAGANINI. It had not
yet gone out of fashion, and I remember hearing OURY*
* " Do we not remember him," writes a correspondent in August 1883,
" more than a quarter of a century ago in Brighton, when hia name was
foremost on the programme of every public musical entertainment ; and
his wife, Madame de Belleville Oury, the most artistic pianoforte per-
former of her day. But time has at length played out poor old Oury,
his latter days were passed in peace at Norwich, and there it was, as his
nephew, Mr. Crook, informed me, he shifted his mortal coil a fortnight
since at the ripe age of 83."
40 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
play DR BERIOT'S showy first concerto -with a full orchestra,
at the Pavilion, in a way which reminded me of some
conqueror traversing a battle-field; the enthusiasm he
aroused was quite remarkable, in that languid and ignorant
crowd of loitering triflers. He certainly brought the house
down. He was a great player, though past his prime, and
he knew how to score point after point without ever
sacrificing his musical honour by stooping to clap-trap.
From OURY I received, between the ages of fifteen and
seventeen, my last definite violin instruction. After that
I studied for myself and heard assiduously the best players,
but I was never taught anything. OURY had been trained
himself in the old and new schools of RODE, BAILLOT,
and DE BERIOT, and only grafted on the sensational dis-
coveries, methods, and tricks of PAGANINI, ERNST, and SIVORI.
But he was artist enough to absorb without corruption
and appropriate without mimicry. He always treated me
with a semi-humorous, though kindly, indulgence. He was
extremely impatient, and got quite bitter and angry with
my ways ; stormed at my self-will ; said I had such a
terrible second finger that he believed the devil was in
it. I had a habit of playing whole tunes with my second
finger on the fourth string. It seemed more muscular than
the rest, and from his point of view quite upset the equili-
brium, of the hand. He had a habit of sighing deeply over
the lessons,
" You should have been in the profession. What 's the
OURY. 41
use of teaching you? Bali ! you will never do anything.
I shall teach you no more."
Then he would listen, as I played some bravura passage
in my own way, half-amused, half-surprised, half-satirical ;
my method was clearly wrong, but how had I got through
the passage at all ? Then taking the violin from me he
would play it himself, without explanation, and then play on
and say :
" Listen to me ; that is your best lesson, you rascal ! I
believe you never practice at all. Nature has given you
too much facility. Your playing will never be worth any-
thing, You do not deserve the gifts God has given you/'
At times poor OURY took quite a serious and desponding
view of me. He would sit long over his hour, playing away
and playing to me, telling me stories about PAGANINI'S
loosening the horsehair of his bow and passing the whole
violin between the stick and the horsehair, thus allowing
the loosened horsehair to scrape all four strings together,
and producing the effect of a quartet. He described the
great magician's playing of harmonic passages, and showed
me how it was done, and told me how the fiddlers when
PAGANINI played sat open-mouthed, unable to make out
how he got at all his consecutive harmonics.
In his lighter moods he taught me the farm-yard on
the violin ; how to make the donkey bray, the hen chuckle,
the cuckoo sing, the cow moo. He taught me PAGANINI'S
" Carnaval de Venise " variations ; some of them especially
42 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
the canary variation so absurdly easy to any fingers at
home on the violin, yet apparently so miraculous to the
uninitiated . But it remained his bitterest reflection that
amateur I was, and amateur I was destined to be ; other-
wise, I believe, I should have been a pupil after his heart,
for he spent hour after hour with me, anl never seemed to
reckon his time or his toil by money.
If I did not acquire the right method, it was not OURY'S
fault. He taught me how to hold the violin ; to spread my
fingers instead of crumpling up those I was
ol.
omn's not using; to bow without sawing round my
METHOD. , ! ,
shoulder.
" In position/' he used often to say, " nothing is right
unless all is right. Hold your wrist right, the bow must
go right ; hold your fiddle well up, or you cannot get the
tone/'
Above all, he taught me how to whip instead of scraping
the sound out. This springing, elastic bowing he contrasted
with the grinding of badly-taught fiddlers, who checked the
vibration. Some violinists of repute have been " grinders/'
but I could never bear to listen to them. OURY poisoned
me early against the grinders, and all short of the men of
perfect method. He instilled into me principles rather than
rules. I caught from him what I was to do, and how I was
to do it. He did not lecture at me like some masters ; he took
the violin out of my hands without speaking, or with merely
OURY'S METHOD. 43
an impatient expletive, of which, I regret to say, he was
rather too free, and played the passage for me. His
explanations I might have forgotten, this I could never
forget, and I could tell at once whether what I did
sounded like what he did.
OURY taught me the secret of cantabile playing on the
violin how to treat a simple melody with rare phrasing,
until it was transfigured by the mood of the player. He
taught me RODE'S Air in G that beautiful melody which
has been, with its well-known variations, the piece de
resistance of so many generations of violinists and soprani.
I was drilled in every note, the bowing was rigidly fixed
for me, the whole piece was marked, bar by bar, with
slur, p and /, rail and crescendo. I was not allowed to
depart a hair's breath from rule. When I could do this
easily and accurately, OUKY surprised me one day by saying,
" Now you can play it as you like, you need not attend
to a single mark ! "
" How so ? " I said.
" Don't you see/' he said, " the marks don't signify :
that is only one way of playing it. If you 've got any music
in you, you can play it in a dozen other ways. Now, I will
make it equally good," and he took the violin and played
it through, reversing as nearly as possible all the p's and f's,
"bowing" the slur and slurring the c( bow," and it sounded
just as well. I never forgot that lesson. At other times
OCRY was most punctilious about what he called "correct"
44 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
bowing. He complained of my habit of beginning a forte
" attaque" with an up bow an unusual perversity, I admit
but I replied, in my conceit, I had observed RICHARD
BLAGROVE do the same thing. OURY said, as sharply as
wisely, " When you play like BLAG ROVE, you may do it
too; until then, oblige me, sir, by minding your up and
down bow, or I cease to be your violin tutor."
I had a good deal of orchestral practice at Brighton
The Symphony Society that met at the Pavilion, Brighton.
was never very strong, but we blazed away at
o2,
THE the principle overtures, " Der Freyschiitz," " Ma-
saniello," " Figaro," " Dame Blanche," cf Cheval
de Bronze w. we ghuffled through HAYDN'S
symphonies, and scrambled over MOZART'S " Jupiter" and
BEETHOVEN'S 8th, very much to our own satisfaction. I
remember the disgust of OURY when an enterprising amateur
let off a pistol behind the platform to reinforce the sudden
explosion on the drum in the Surprise movement. I
suppose JULLIEN'S " British Army Quadrilles " had put it
into his head.
OURY detested JULLIEN why, I could never make out.
I was fond of maintaining that JULLIEN had done much for
music in England, introduced classical works, was
OO.
OUEYON a famous conductor, and good composer of light
8AINTON ON MENDELSSOHN. 45
" He knows nothing, I tell you; he is an ignorant, affected
charlatan. He cannot write down his own compositions,
he borrows his subjects, he steals his treatment, and he
bribes a man to lick it into shape for him. MELLON, his
leader, is a good musician; but don't talk to me of JULLIEN.
You admire the way his band plays the overture to the
' Midsummer Night's Dream/ but those men learnt it under
MENDELSSOHN'S baton ! MENDELSSOHN took an infinity of
trouble with those very men. They knew the music by
heart before JULLIEN touched it, and they played away
without even looking at him."
I used about this time to hear some very good quartet-
playing at CAPTAIN NEWBERRY'S, Brunswick Square. The
34 captain must have been nearly seventy about
BAINTON ON that time. He was excessively good-humoured,
AND but belonged to the old school of HAYDN and
EN> MOZART. BEETHOVEN'S earlier quartets were
admitted, but the RAZAMOUSKY'S were declared to be outside
the pale, and the captain annoyed me extremely by speaking
in a very slighting way of MENDELSSOHN. " Rides his
subjects to death/' he used to say ; " tears 'em all to pieces,"
" goes thin, very thin." Those were the days when I felt
quite sure that no one ever had or ever would write such
inspired music as MENDELSSOHN. I think M. SAINTON'S
calm verdict, not long afterwards, irritated me still more.
I said to him with ill-advised confidence : " I had sooner
46 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
hear MENDELSSOHN'S canzonet or the quintet than any of
BEETHOVEN'S chamber music."
" Vous avez cependant tort/' said the great artist, " there
is no comparison to be made. You cannot speak of the
two together. MENDELSSOHN, c'etait un jeune homme d'un
enorme talent ; mais BEETHOVEN oh ! c'est autre chose ! "
The captain had some fine violins ; one I specially coveted ;
he held it to be a genuine STRADIVARIUS; it was labelled
1712; quite in the finest period, and of the
errand pattern the back a magnificently ribbed
MY VIOLIN. C
slice of maple in one piece ; the front hardly
so fine; the head strong, though not so fine as I have
seen more like a BERGONZI but the fiddle itself could
never be mistaken for a BERGONZI. It had a tone like
a trumpet on the fourth string; the third was full, but
the second puzzled me for years it being weak by com-
parison but the violin was petulant, and after having it
in my possession for thirty years, I know what to do with
it if I could ever again take the time and trouble to bring
it into perfect order and keep it so, as it was once my pride
to do.
On CAPTAIN NEWBERRY'S death that fiddle was sent me
by his widow, who did not survive him long. She said she
believed it was his wish.
This violin was my faithful companion for years. I now
look at it under a glass case occasionally, where it lies
CHARM OF ORCHESTRAL PLAYING. 47
unstrung from one end of the year to the other. It
belonged to the captain's uncle; he had set his heart on
it, and having a very fine pair of carriage horses, for which
he had given 180, he one day made them over to his
uncle and obtained the Strad in exchange. This was the
last price paid for my violin, some fifty years ago. It came
into the hands of NEWBERRY'S relative early in the present
century how, I know not. Many years ago I took this
fiddle down to Bath and played it a good deal there in a
band conducted by the well-known MR. SALMON. I found
he recognised it immediately. I there made acquaintance
with the score of MENDELSSOHN'S " Athalie " playing it in
the orchestra. I studied the Scotch and Italian symphonies
in the same way.
j
No amateur should omit ail opportunity of orchestral or
chorus work. In this way you get a more living acquain-
3G. tance with the internal structure of the great
ORCHESTRAL master -p^ eces tnan i Q any other. I first made
PLAYING, acquaintance with the " Elijah " and " St. Paul "
in this way. What writing for the violin there is in the
chorus parts ! what telling passages are those in " Be not
afraid," where the first violins lift the phrases, rise after
rise, until the shrill climax is reached and the aspiring
passage is closed with a long drawn-out^.
When the violins pealed louder and louder, mounting
upwards, it was always a delight to me to hear my own
48 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
powerful first string thrilling through all the others. The
conductor used to know this passage and the way in which
it told on my Strad, and invariably gave me a knowing nod
as he heard my violin at the first fiddle-desk through all the
others. I may add that, as a rule, when any particular
violin in a band is heard above the rest, it usually belongs
to a bungler; but there are passages where the leading
violins have carte blanche to play up, and then, if you can,
you may be allowed to sing through the rest ; and, if this
be anywhere allowable, it is of course so at the first violin
desk.
Most boys find it difficult to keep up their music at
school ; with me it was the reverse ; my ill health was
37. the making of my music. I had been an invalid
FRE rtl ER ' on and off up to the age of seventeen. I re-
ISLE OF * ^
WIGHT member SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, the great doctor,
a thin, wizen, little old man, coming and staring at me, about
the year 1848, at No. 2, Spanish Place, my grandfather's
house in London. I was then suffering from hip disease.
They asked him whether I should be taken to Brighton.
He mumbled something to himself and turned away to
speak with my father aside. I merely noticed an expression
of great pain and anxiety on my father's face as he listened.
Afterwards I knew the great doctor had said it did not
matter where I went, for in any case I could not live. He
thought it was a question of weeks. He little knew how
FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT. 49
much it would take to kill me. People are born long-lived.
It runs in families. It has little to do with health and
disease. If you are long-lived you will weather disease, and
if you are short-lived you will drop suddenly in full health,
or be blown out like a candle, with a whiff of fever or
bronchitis. My grandfather died Rector of Aldwinkle,
when past eighty; my father having been given over at
thirty-two by his doctors, as I was condemned by SIR
BENJAMIN BRODIE at eleven, became Rector of Slaughara,
Sussex, at seventy-two, and was made a Canon and Pre-
bendary of Chichester Cathedral when hard upon eighty.
He picked up his general health about sixty. I was more
fortunate, I picked up mine before thirty. SIR BENJAMIN
pocketed his fee and departed. In great perplexity what to
do, we cast lots ; I think it was at my suggestion. The lot
came out in favour of Brighton. To Brighton I was taken,
apparently in a dying state, but at my grandmother's house
in Brunswick Square I began rapidly to amend.
My violin was my solace, when I got strong enough to
hold it again. The time that should have been spent upon
mathematics, Latin, and Greek, was spent in my case upon
French, German, and music I may add novels, for between
the ages of twelve and sixteen I read all BULWER, WALTER
SCOTT, G. P. R. JAMES, FENIMORE COOPER, and, in certain
visits to Bath and Bognor, I took care to exhaust the
ancient stores of fiction which I found secreted in the an-
tiquated lending libraries of those privileged resorts.
4
50 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
"When I was sixteen it became evident that I was not
going to die; my health was still feeble, and my general
education defective. I was sent to an excellent
38.
SCHOOL AT tutor at the Isle of Wight, the REV. JOHN
'BicKNELL, now Incumbent of St. Saviour's,
Highbury. That good man never overcame my dislike to
mathematics, but he got me on in Latin, and he was kind
enough to tolerate my violin.
I could no longer play cricket, or climb trees, the chief
delights of my earlier days nor could I take long walks
with the boys. I was left entirely alone in play hours i.e.
almost every afternoon. I think I was perfectly happy by
myself. Freshwater, Isle of Wight, in 1853, was very
different from Freshwater in 1883. There were no forts
built then, no tourists, hardly a lodging house, and only a
few cottages. There was the Rector, a REV. MR. ISAACSON,
learned, dogmatic, and of the old high and dry school in
the pulpit ; there were two or three families who owned
between them most of that part of the island the
Hammonds, the Croziers, and the Cottons. There was a
rotten steamer called the " Solent " which plied between
the dirty little town of Yarmouth and the mainland and
when it crossed we got letters ; and when it did not cross
we went without. And there was such utter solitude for
me, in the silent lanes, the summer woodlands, and by the
lovely sea-shore, that well I had plenty of time to think.
I sat on stiles and thought ; I tasted almost every kind of
SCHOOL AT FRESHWATER. 51
berry and herb that grew iu the hedges. I watched the
butterflies and the teeming insect life, and I would lie down
in the woody recesses and leafy coverts like one dead, until
the birds, the rabbits, and even the weasels and stoats came
close enough for me to see their exquisitely clean soft
fur, bright eyes, or radiant plumage. I have surprised
a wild hawk on her nest in the gorse, and she has never
moved.
About this time I wrote quantities of the most dismal
poetry, which appeared at intervals in the columns of the
Brighton papers. It was naturally a mixture of BRYANT
and LONGFELLOW, later on it became a jumble of TENNYSON
and BROWNING but such matters belong more to literature
than to music.
OURY had already begun to direct my violin studies.
I had ample time at school in the Isle of Wight for prac-
tising, and I practised steadily, nearly every day. I had a
faculty for practising. I knew what to do, and I did it.
I always remembered what JOACHIM had said about tiring
out the hand ; and with some abominable torture passages,
invented for me by that morose Pole, LAPINSKI, I took a
vicious pleasure in making my fingers ache, and an intense
delight in discovering the magical effects of the torture
upon my execution.
I put my chief trust in KREUTZER'S exercises admirable
in invention and most attractive as musical studies the
4 *
52 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
more difficult ones in chords being little violin solos in
themselves. I perfected myself in certain solos
at this time. I had no one to play my ac-
MY SOLOS.
companimeuts, and no one cared to hear me
play at school, except some of the boys who liked to
hear me imitate the donkey and give the farm-yard
entertainment including the groans 'of a chronic invalid
and a great fight of cats on the roof which never failed to
be greeted with rapturous applause.
My great solos were RODE'S air in G, DE BERIOT'S " First
Concerto," and several of his "Airs varies"; ERNST'S
" Carnaval de Venise/' his Elegie, and some occasional
" Morceaux " which I had heard him play shockingly out of
tune at Brighton.
Then there was the " Cuckoo Solo '' one of the pieces
played by the little girl of six who so fascinated me at
Norwood. Besides these, I had certain mixtures of my own
a mixture of Italian airs with some prodigious cadenzas
and a bravura passage at the end in the worst possible taste,
which always brought down the house. Then I invented a
final variation to the " Carnaval de Venise," more preposterous
than any of the PAGANINI or ERNST series. This variation
was so difficult that I could never really play it ; but my
attempts to scramble through it being always vociferously
applauded, I habitually inflicted it upon un discriminating
audiences alas ! the commonest kind of musical audiences
in this country though I am thankful to say this is far
AT FAEEINGFORD. 53
less true now, and in London, than it was in the days of my
boyhood.
I said no one cared to hear me play at Freshwater. Yes,
some people did. One autumn whilst I was at Freshwater,
an old house, Farringford, with a rambling
AT FARRETO- garden at the back of the downs, was let to
RD ' Baron A. an eminent light of the Bench and
*&
his charming family. I forget how they discovered my
existence, but I dare say Lady A. and the young ladies
found the place rather dull, and they were not the people to
neglect their opportunities.
I received an invitation to dinner; my violin was also
asked. I did not reply like SIVORI when similarly invited to
bring his violin with him : " Merci ! mon violon ne dine
pas!" I saw to my strings and screws, put together my
solos, and went.
Lady A., with her beautiful grey hair, her sweet and
dignified smile, and a soul full of musical sensibility, received
me with the most nattering cordiality. The eldest young
lady, now the Marchioness of S , I remember seeing
once or twice only at Farringford. Table-turning was all
the fashion then. The Farringford circle was, like most
others, divided on the question, but the old Baron was a
sceptic.
We all sat round a heavy dining-table one day, and the
thing certainly began to go round, and was only arrested in
54 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
its course through a large bow window by the hurried
breaking up of the circle. I didn't turn any more tables
at Farringford, but Lady A. used to beg me to come as
often as I could and play, and I think I went there on an
average twice a week and enjoyed myself immensely. The
Farringford music was not strong, as to pianoforte playing
at least ; but the youngest daughter, Miss M., little more
than a child, had a sweet voice, and seemed to me altogether
an angelic being, and between them they managed to get
through some of my easier accompaniments. OURY had
given me an air of MAYERSEDER'S, to which he had added
a pathetic little closing cadence of his own. He had taught
me to play it with due expression, and this air Lady A. could
never hear often enough. The little cadence in sliding
sixths at the end, she said, always made her feel inclined
to scream. One night Miss M. induced her mother to sing
"Auld Robin Gray." "You know, mamma/' she said,
" everyone used to cry when you sang ' Auld Robin Gray.' "
" Ah ! my dear," said the old lady "that was long ago. I
can't sing now, I 'm an old woman " ; but she did sing, and
with a pathetic simple grace and feeling which I can
remember vividly even now ; and as I listened I easily per-
ceived where Miss M. had got her sweet soprano voice
from.
Soon after the A.'s left Farringford it was taken by the
Poet Laureate. At that time I was rapidly outgrowing
TENNYSON. 55
LONGFELLOW, and my enthusiasm for MR. TENNYSON amounted
to a mania : he was to me in poetry what
MENDELSSOHN was in music. I can now place
TESSYSON.
him. I can now see how great he is. I can
now understand his relation to other poets. Then I could
not. He confused and dazzled me. He took possession of
my imagination. He taught me to see and to feel for the
first time the heights and depths of life ; to discern dimly
what I could then have had little knowledge of "The
world with all its lights and shadows, all the wealth and
all the woe." In fact, TENNYSON was then doing for the
rising generation of that age what BYRON and SHELLEY,
WORDSWORTH and COLERIDGE, had done for theirs, only he
united in himself more representative qualities than any one
of the poets who preceded him, and in this respect he seems
to me still a greater poet, and certainly as subtle a thinker
as any one of them, WORDSWORTH and COLERIDGE not
excepted.
All this is an after- thought. Then I did not analyse or
compare. The Brighton papers received elaborate prose
effusions from my pen upon the subject, at the time, of a
frothy and rhetorical character. Sometimes I look at them
in my old scrap-books, and marvel at the bombast, inflation,
and prodigious inanity of the matter and the style. No
doubt I was not quite right in my head about TENNYSON,
and this accounts for my wending my steps towards Farring-
ford one autumn afternoon, soon after he had come there.
56 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
The poet never went to church, so the poet could never
be seen. The man who, in the "In Memoriam," had
recently re-formulated the religion of the nineteenth century,
might, one would have thought, be excused the dismal
routine that went on at the parish church, and the patristic
theology doled out by the worthy rector. But no ! MR.
TENNYSON'S soul was freely despaired of in the neighbour-
hood, and many of the people about Freshwater would have
been " very faithful " with him if they could only have got
at him but they could not get at him. Under these
circumstances I got at him.
I suppose the continued play of one idea upon my brain
was too much for me. To live so close to the man who
42. filled the whole of my poetic and imaginative
MY VISIT TO h or i zon without ever seeing him. was more than
TENNYSON
IN 1854. i could bear. I walked over the neglected grass-
grown gravel between the tall trees yellowing in the autumn,
and up to the glass-pannelled doors, as bold as fate.
"Mn. TENNYSON/' said the maid, "saw no one/' I was
aware of that. Was MRS. TENNYSON at home ? Perhaps
she would see me ? The servant looked dubious. I was a
shabby-looking student, sure enough, but there was some-
thing about me which could not be said nay ! I evidently
meant to get in, and in I got.
In another moment I found myself in the drawing-room
lately tenanted by the Baron and Lady A.
MY VISIT TO TENNYSON IN 1854. 57
There was the arm-chair where lady A. had sat reclining,
with her head resting on a little cushion, as she sang
" Auld Robin Gray."
There was the piano beside which Miss M. stood and sang
very shyly and under protest in her simple white muslin
dress and a rose in her hair ; there but the door opened,
and a quiet, gentle lady appeared, and bowed silently to me.
I had to begin then.
I had no excuse to make, and so I offered no apology. I
had called desiring to see MR. TENNYSON, that was all.
The lady looked surprised, and sat down by a little work-
table with a little work-basket on it. She asked me very
kindly to sit down too. So I sat down. What next? Now
I got clumsy with a vengeance. All my wits forsook me.
I looked out at the tangled garden everything was allowed
to grow wild. I had to say something. I looked at the
kind lady, who had already taken up her work and begun
plying her needle. I said that my admiration for MR.
TENNYSON'S poems was so great that, as I was living in the
neighbourhood, I had called with an earnest desire to see
him. I then began to repeat that I considered his poems
so exquisite that a smile was on the kind lady's face as she
listened for the thousand and first time to such large and
general praises of the Laureate's genius. But the smile
somehow paralysed me. She evidently considered me a
harmless lunatic, not an impertinent intruder.
This was fortunate, for had I been summarily shown the
58 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
door I should not have been surprised. I should not have
gone, for I was desperate and prepared to show fight, and
be kicked out, if needful, by the Laureate alone ; but the
Fates were propitious.
Said MRS. TENNYSON, " My husband is always very busy,
and I do not at all think it likely he can see you."
" Do you think he would if you ask him ? " I stammered
out.
Said MRS. TENNYSON, a little taken aback, "I don't
know."
" Then," said I, pursuing my advantage with, if any calm
at all, the calmness of a calm despair, " would you object
to asking him to see me, if only for an instant ? "
What passed in that indulgent lady's mind I shall never
know ; the uppermost thought was probably not flattering
to me, and her chief desire was, no doubt, to get rid pf me.
" He won't go till he has seen my husband he ought never
to have got in ; but as he is here, I '11 manage it and have
done with him " ; or she might have reflected thus : " The
poor fellow is not right in his head ; it would be a charity
to meet him half-way, and not much trouble."
At any rate at this juncture MRS. TENNYSON rose and left
the room. She was gone about four minutes by the clock.
It seemed to me four hours. What I went through in those
four minutes no words can utter. " Will he come ? I
almost hope he won't. If he won't come, I shall have done
all I could to see him, without experiencing a shock to
MY VISIT TO TENNYSON IN 1854. 59
which my nervous system is quite unequal." At that
moment, indeed, I was trembling with excitement from top
to toe. I thought I would try and recollect some of his
own sublime verse, it might steady me a little. I knew
volumes of it by heart couldn't recollect a line anywhere,
except
Wrinkled ostler grim and thin,
Here is custom come your way,
Take my brute and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.
I believe I was muttering this mechanically when I heard
a man's voice close outside the door.
" Who is it ? Is it an impostor ? "
Ah, verily, the word smote me to the heart. What right
had I to be there ? Conscience said, " Thou art the man ! "
I would have willingly disappeared into my boots, like the
genius in the fairy tale. " O, that this too, too solid flesh
would melt"; but I remained palpable and motionless
glued to the spot.
In another moment the door opened. The man whose
voice I had heard in other words, MR. TENNYSON entered.
He was not in Court-dress; he had not got a laurel
wreath on his head, nor a lily in his hand not even a
harp.
It was in the days when he shaved. I have two portraits
of him without a beard. I believe they are very rare
now.
I thought it would be inappropriate to prostrate myself
60 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
so I remained standing and stupefied. He advanced towards
me and shook hands without cordiality. Why should he be
cordial ? I began desperately to say that I had the greatest
admiration for his poetry ; that I could not bear to leave the
island without seeing him. He soon stopped me, and taking
a card of CAPTAIN CROZIER'S which lay on the table, asked me
if I knew him. I said I did, and described his house and
grounds in the neighbourhood of Freshwater.
I have no recollection of anything else, but I believe
some allusion was made to Baron A , when the poet
observed abruptly, " Now I must go ; good-bye ! " and he
went. And that was all I saw of MR. TENNYSON for nearly
thirty years. The next time I set eyes on him was one
Sunday morning, about twenty-eight years later. He came
up the side aisle of my church, St. James, Westmoreland
Street, Marylebone, an.d, with his son HALLAM, sat near the
pulpit, almost in the very spot that had been pointed out
to me when I was appointed incumbent as the pew occupied
by HALLAM the historian and Iris son ARTHUR the ARTHUR
of the " In Memoriam."
But I have not quite done with the interview at Fresh-
water. As the poet retired, MRS. TENNYSON re-entered and
sat down again at her work-table. To her sur-
43.
MRS. prise, no doubt, I also sat down. The fact is, I
had crossed the Rubicon, and was now in a state
of considerable elation and perfectly reckless. I thanked
MBS. TENNYSON. 61
her effusively for the privilege I had had I believe I made
several tender and irrelevant inquiries after the poet's health,
and wound up with earnestly requesting her to give me a bit
of his handwriting.
This was perhaps going a little too far but I had now
nothing to lose no character for sanity, or prudence, or
propriety ; so I went in steadily for some of the poet's
handwriting.
The forbearing lady pointed out that she treasured it so
much herself that she never gave it away. This would not
do. I said I should treasure it to my dying day, any little
scrap by which I suppose I meant that I did not require
the whole manuscript of " Maud," which the poet was then
writing, and which is full of Freshwater scenery. I might
be induced to leave the house with something short of that.
With infinite charity and without a sign of irritation she
at last drew from her work-basket an envelope in MR.
TENNYSON'S handwriting, directed to herself, and gave it
to me.
It was not his signature, but it contained his name.
Then, and then only, I rose. I had veni, I had vidi,
I had vici. I returned to my school, and at tea-time
related to my tutor with some little pride and self-conceit
the nature of my exploit that afternoon. He administered
to me a well-merited rebuke, which, as it came after my
indiscretion, and in no way interfered with my long-coveted
joy, I took patiently enough and with all meekness.
62 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
There is a strange link between these two old memories
of Farringford, Isle of Wight. I may call it the link of a
common oblivion. Years afterwards I tried to
44.
THE LINK OF recall to Lady A., who frequented my church in
her later days, the, to me, delicious evenings I
had spent with her and her daughters at Farringford.
She had not the slightest recollection of ever having
received me there, or sung to me there, or heard me play.
She reintroduced me to her eldest daughter, the Marchioness
of S., then Viscountess C., one night at her house in Port-
land Place, who was probably not aware of ever having
seen me before, although I remembered her well at Farring-
ford. Years afterwards I tried to recall to MB. and MRS.
TENNYSON that preposterous visit of mine, which I have
detailed, but neither of them could recall it in the slightest
degree.
So strange is it that eveuts which upon some of the
actors leave such an indelible impression pass entirely
away from the memories of the others and what a
sermon might be preached on that text ! The very same
scene in which you and I are the only ones concerned
is nothing to you, everything to me.
O ye tidal years that roll over us all be kind !
Wash out the memory of our pain and the dark blots of
sin and grief, but leave, oh leave us bright, the burnished
gold of joy, and the rainbow colours of our youth I
ACCOMPANTISTS. 63
I have been a martyr to bad accompanyists. All young
ladies think they can accompany themselves so why not
you or any other man ? The truth is that very
4o.
ACCOMPANY- few ladies can accompany at all. If they sing
they will probably try, in the absence of any
musical friend, to make shift with a few chords in order
that the assembly may not be deprived of a song. But
also if they sing they will probably have forgotten the little
they once knew about pianoforte playing. To accompany
yourself properly you must do it with ease and accuracy :
nothing is so charming and nothing is so rare.
Singing ladies, especially amateurs, are pitiably unscrupu-
lous, and moderately unconscious of the wild effect pro-
duced by that fitful and inaccurate dabbling with the key-
board which they palm off upon their listeners as an
accompaniment. Now and then a Scotch ballad may sur-
vive such treatment a Scotch ballad seems always grateful
for any accompaniment at all but to attempt GOUNOD or
SCHUBERT in this style is conduct indicative of a weak intel-
lect and a feeble conscience.
To accompany well you must not only be a good musician
but you must be mesmeric, sympathetic, intuitive. You
must know what I want before I tell you, you must feel
which way my spirit sets, for the motions of the soul are
swift as an angel's flight. I cannot pause in those quick
and subtle transitions of emotion, fancy, passion, to tell
you a secret ; if it is not yours already, you are unworthy of
6* BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
it. What ! when I had played three bars thus, you could
not guess that 1 should hurry the fourth and droop with a
melodious sigh upon the fifth ! You dared to strike in at
the end of a note which my intention would have stretched
out into at least another semibreve ! You are untrue to
the rhythm of my soul. Get up from the piano, my con-
ceited, self-satisfied young lady. Your finishing lessons in
music can do nothing for you. Your case is hopeless. You
have not enough music in you to know that you are a
failure.
But you may be even a good musician and yet not be
able to accompany. If you cannot, be passive for a while.
You are of no use to me. You want to take the initiative
you must always be creating, you think you know best,
you impose your " reading " upon me. What ! you will
do this when I am the soloist or the singer ! You are
professional 'tis the vice of professionals and I am but
an amateur. No matter ; if I know not best, that is my
affair; for better for worse you have to follow me, or
you will mar me. The art of true accompanying lies in a
willing self-immolation. An excess of sensibility, but a
passive excess. Yet must your collaboration be strong.
You must not desert me or fail me in the moment of my
need or expectancy. You must cover me with thunder,
you must buoy me up as a barque is buoyed up on the
bosom of a great flood. You must be still anon and wait,
dream with my spirit, as the winds that droop fitfully when
MUSIC AT BRIGHTON IN 1856. 65
the sea grows calm and the white sails flap idly, sighing
for the breeze. I sleep, but my heart waketh ! Every mood
of mine must be thine as soon as it is mine, and when all
is finished my soul shall bless thee, and thou, too, shalt feel
a deep content.
In my vacations at Brighton I suffered musically many
things at the hands of many accompany ists, chiefly young
46. ladies. I was fortunate in playing habitually
MUSIC AT Tff\fa my elder sister, and later on with my
BRIGHTON IN J J
1856. younger sister, both of whom were thoroughly
familiar with my style; but I sometimes fell among the
Philistine women at evening parties and musical circles.
In those days musical taste at Brighton was not high.
No one thought of listening to mere pianoforte playing.
There were a few good singers to whom people did attend.
I remember MRS. WELDON, then a mere girl, Miss TREHERNE,
and possesssed of considerable personal attractions. She
was a charming drawing-room singer, and was always
listened to with respect in those days.
A delicious little song, " Birds in the Branches," of Ger-
man origin, made a great impression on me when sung by
a Miss CHAPMAN a very handsome, pale, refined-looking
girl daughter of MR. CHAPMAN of the Overend and Gurney
Bank. They lived in Brunswick Square, and I met this
young lady on an average twice a week at musical parties,
and late and early she sang very deliciously and dreamily,
5
C6 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
" Birds in the Branches/' The poor girl married a fashion-
able baronet in the neighbourhood, and died sh ortly after-
wards.
Miss HARRIETT YOUNG, the author of several popular songs,
was a brilliant amateur pianist. Her singing she had a
light high soprano was even more esteemed ; people were
not musical enough to understand the merit of her playing.
I remember hearing her in the MENDELSSOHN D minor trio
at PROFESSOR, D'ALQUEN'S one night, and being much over-
come by my feelings at the wild and magnificent close, I
turned to a musician who was standing close to me and
exclaimed, " 'Tis like going up to heaven by a whirlwind ! ''
He merely stared.
D'ALQTJEN used to play at CAPTAIN NEWBERRY'S. He
got one of his violins when the Captain died. He did a
great deal for music in Brighton. He was an admirable
musician, an excellent teacher, and a German artist of the
solid MOSCHELES type. I was one night at his house
when a telegram arrived to say that Sebastopol had at last
fallen, and D'ALQUEN sat down to the piano and executed
a rather disjointed but murderous improvisation inspired
by the siege and ultimate surrender of that redoubtable
fortress ; the great guns in the bass were continuous and
the firing was very heavy. Before midnight another tele-
gram arrived to say that it was all a mistake, and Sebas-
topol had not fallen. Of course we took no notice, and
indeed were rather anxious to conceal the awkward and
PLAYING AT PARTIES. 67
malaprop intelligence from the worthy Professor. We all
felt it was high time Sevastopol did fall, and some time after-
wards it fell, and D'ALQUEN'S piano, which had suffered
considerably from the cannonade by anticipation, had at
last something to show for it.
In those days the musical culture of Brighton was chiefly
managed by HERR KUHE, still an ornament of the Brighton
season, MONS. DE PARIS, and SIGNOR Li CALSI, sometime con-
ductor of the Italian Opera, and, let me add, an admirable
musician, pianist, and, above all, accompanyist. He
accompanied me occasionally on the piano, and also in
another capacity, for we travelled together as far as Genoa.
I was on my way to Naples. Li CALSI had started with
rifle and sword to join GARIBALDI, like many other Italian
patriots. He got to Sicily, and got no farther. He was
a Sicilian by birth. He revisited his friends, and parted
with his rifle.
After GARIBALDI'S capture of Naples there was really little
more to do. I went on and assisted at the siege of Capua,
but it was mere dabbling in war, and Li CALSI
47.
PLATING AT probably felt that the work was over, and well
over, without him, and he might as well rest and
be thankful at Palermo, most delightful of southern cities.
But I am not writing my life abroad, or the story of my
Garibaldian campaign at Naples, and I make haste to return
to Brighton.
5 *
68 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
The musical parties at Brighton were a source of very
mixed satisfaction to me. I believe I always had the
instinct of a virtuoso, and I certainly had the irrita-
bility and impatience of one. It was not de rigueur at
Brighton to listen to anyone, but I never could bear
playing to people who did not listen. In mixed com-
panies I resorted to every conceivable trick and device
to ensnare attention ; and I am quite aware as STERN DALE
BENNETT, who accompanied the first solo I ever played
in a public concert room, told me some years afterwards
that I injured my style by a partiality for crude and
sensational effect, which my better judgment even then
revolted from.
I had the deepest contempt for mixed audiences. On
more than one occasion, when I had been unable with my
utmost efforts to silence the roar of conversation, I have
simply laid down my violin in the middle of a bar, and
received the thanks of my hostess who thought it was all
right and quite " too-too" with a smile and a bow far more
satirical than polite. But I am bound to say that the violin,
being in those days somewhat of a novelty iu private society,
and I having won a sort of reputation, I usually got the ear
of the room, and I may perhaps, without undue vanity say,
usually kept it.
Being naturally short of stature, I have suffered much from
having often to play behind a crowd, a few only of whom
"MOMENTS PERDU S." 69
could either hear or see me. The soloist or singer ought
48. always to be raised, if possible. He has to
"wns^BB 81 ma g ne ti se ms audience as well as play to
SEEN. them. He cannot do this unless he can see and
be seen. When I got more knowing, I always chose
a vantage-ground and cleared a space in front of me.
The next best thing to being raised for a speaker or a
player is to be isolated. Public performers often neglect
this. I have seen a singer in a dark dress against a dark
background, and half-way down the room she has been un-
distinguishable from the chorus behind her. I have seen a
lecturer in a black coat, with a black board for his back-
ground, and a little way off it has been " Vox et praeterea
nihil."
As from the age of seven I have always played the violin
more or less publicly, I entered upon my amateur career
at Brighton without the smallest nervousness.
49.
-MOMENTS My facility was very great, but my execution,
PERDVS."
although showy (and, I blush to add, tricky),
was never as finished as I could have desired. My tone,
however, was considered by OURY remarkable, and except
when drilling me with a purpose he would never interfere
with my reading of a solo. It was the only point in which
he gave in to me.
" I never taught you that," he would say sharply.
" Shall I alter it ? " I would ask.
70 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
" No, no, let it alone ; follow your own inspiration ; you
must do as you will, the effect is good/'
Indeed, no one ever taught me the art c drawing tears
from the eyes of my listeners. Moments came to me
when I was playing I seemed far away from the world.
I was not scheming for effect there was no trick about it.
I could give no reason for the rail, the p, the pp, the /.
Something in my soul ordered it so, and my fingers followed,
communicating every inner vibration through their tips to
the vibrating string until the mighty heart of the Cremona
pealed out like a clarion, or whispered tremblingly in
response. But those moments did not come to me in mixed,
buzzing audiences ; then I merely waged impatient war with
a mob.
They came in still rooms where a few were met, and
the lights were low, and the windows open toward the
sea.
They came in brilliantly lighted halls, what time I had
full command from some platform of an attentive crowd
gathered to listen, not to chatter.
They came when some one or other sat and played with
me, whose spirit-pulses rose and fell with mine in a world
of sound where the morning stars seemed always singing
together.
I was such a thorn in the side of my accompanyists that
at last they got to have a wholesome dread of me. In
this way I often got off playing at houses where people asked
A SACRIFICE. n
me to bring my violin impromptu, because I happened to
be the fashion.
I remember one such house the young lady who was
to accompany me had just come home from school with
all the accomplishments. Her music was so
superfine that she had even learned to play
A SACRIFICE.
MENDELSSOHN'S " Songs without Words/' No. I.,
Book I., vilely, as I am afraid I told her in language more
true than polite. I was just seventeen. She was very
good-looking, with a considerable opinion of my musical
faculties, and apparently not unwilling to be taught, so I
went through No. I., Book I. I was sanguine enough
to hope that I might impart to her a right feeling for it.
All in vain. She played it like a bit of wood mechani-
cally correct and mechanically stupid. I gave it up, and
took out my violin it was the morning, and we had met
to rehearse quietly for the evening RODE'S air. in G.
Of course, the accompaniment to this was simple, very
simple, but all depended upon the sympathetic following
a hair's-brcadth out, and the whole would be marred.
I felt blank enough at the prospect after No. I., Book I.
She glanced at the music.
It 'a not very difficult, is it ? "
"Oh dear no," I replied, "the notes you have to play
are easy enough ; you must follow me. It 's not in
strict time, you know. I play it varying the time accord-
72 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
ing to expression, and you must watch and wait for
me."
So we began. I stopped her at the second bar. We began
again. I stopped her at the fourth bar. I was very patient
but very determined. She was very good and patient too,
but alas ! hopelessly incompetent. I stopped her at the
sixth bar I was losing my temper a little. I did not notice
her growing distress. I went on saying rather hardly,
" You came in too soon/' " You don't wait for me/' " Begin
again/' and so on. Not until I turned round to rebuke
the unfortunate girl for a new blunder, and saw a great tear
roll on to the ivory keys, accompanied by a little suppressed
sob, was I fully alive to the situation. My angry complaint
died upon my lips. I muttered some clumsy apology, but
she rose from the piano scarlet with humiliation and rushed
out of the room. I felt like a brute, but I was profoundly
thankful to think that I had escaped the ordeal of having
to go through RODE'S air in G with a young lady who had
just given me such a taste of her quality.
I am glad to say that, although her mother thought it
silly, this was the first and last time she ever played in my
presence, or proposed to accompany me. This is only a
specimen of the trials I had to go through when I was a
violin-playing youth about Brighton and elsewhere.
Some of the best rooms for music which I have played
in at Brighton are the drawing-rooms in Adelaide Crescent,
BEIGRTON TASTE. 73
and some among the worst are to be found in Lansdowne
Place. I suppose I had my unknown admirers,
51.
BRIGHTON as one day I received an invitation to a ball
given by the officers then quartered at Brighton,
whom I used to meet in society, but only knew by sight.
This, on account of my youth, I was very properly advised
to decline, as well as many other invitations to play at the
houses of strangers who got introductions to me through
those occasionally doubtful blessings called "mutual friends/'
From what I have said it will appear that musical taste
in Brighton about 1856 was not high. I can hardly
recollect a salient point to relieve the dull dead level of
amateur dabbling. Here and there one met with a pianist
of promise, a strong cornet or private flute, with consider-
able taste and execution, and invariably out of tune with
the piano, and the usual number of girls singing the ditties
of "Claribel " or " Virginia Gabriel/' &c., who have at last
been crowded out, I am thankful to say, by ARTHUR
SULLIVAN, F. CLAY, and TOSTI.
I was always very open to new musical impressions, and
very ready to hail the least symptoms of musical ability.
Amateurs suppose that persons who have studied
MDSICAL music, especially professionals, are hard to please.
This is a mistake. A real musician gives you
the utmost credit for what you do, and even for what you
try to do. He can put up with almost anything but stupid
74 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
insensibility and conceit. He discerns quickly the least
spark of talent, and makes little account of deficiencies
which time and industry \vill correct. "When I hear any-
one, I cannot help instinctively gauging their first-rate
musical organisation, second-rate ditto, third-rate ditto,
fourth organic incompetence. Of course there is every
degree, and anything below second-rate quality is in my
opinion not worth cultivating. The curse of English pro-
fessional music is the plethora of second-rate quality. The
glory of English amateur music is that sprinkling of first-
rate quality which towers above the dead level of amateur
incompetence. The dullest thing I know is to listen to
cultivated second-class quality, amateur or professional. It
is not bad enough to condemn, nor good enough to praise,
nor interesting enough to listen to. 'Tis the pretentious
curse of drawing-rooms, the bane of concert rooms, and the
despair of helpless creatures who struggle about in the whirl-
pool of London music and subside into nursery governesses,
milliners, or marriage.
There are some people whose musical organisation is so
fine, and whose instinctive method is so true, that without
that stern discipline usually essential to the pro-
53.
NATURAL duction of the voice, they have managed to teach
themselves how to sing modestly but faultlessly,
as far as they go, although not knowing even their notes.
Those people will sing you a national ballad with true
SEASIDE MINSTRELS. 75
pathos, and even a certain technical finish, which many a
skilled professional might envy.
I remember delighting in LORD HEADLEY'S singing, which
was of this kind. He lived close to us, in Brunswick
Square, and I often heard him after dinner sing his Irish
ballads not invariably MOORE, but some wilder still,
and some quite unfamiliar to me. He used to throw back
his rather large head, and display a very broad white waist-
coat ; and standing with his two thumbs thrust into the arm-
holes of his waistcoat, and his fingers spread out and twitch-
ing nervously with emotion, he would pour out his ditty
with the truest instinct and often finest pathos. In this,
without knowing a note of music, he evidently took exceed-
ing delight himself, and so did we. He who loves the
sound of his own voice is not always so fortunate. LORD
HEADLEY'S voice was small, flexible, and exquisitely sympa-
thetic, and made me always think of TOM MOORE'S graceful
musical declamation of the Irish melodies, which, of course,
I had only read about.
I do not think, on the whole, the sea-coast street music,
especially at Brighton, has improved during the last thirty
years the German bands, niggers, and itinerant
54.
SEASIDE troubadours. I can recollect fine part-singing
*" out of doors in the old days, and I know of no
small band violin, tenor, flute, and harp at all comparable
to that of SIGNOR BENEVENTANO, who used to play on the
76 BRIGHTON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
beach at Brighton, with a power of expression that drew
crowds, and half-crowns too. I was so much fascinated by
this Italian, that I took him home with me and bade him
try my violin. It was simply horrible. He scraped, and
rasped, and powdered the rosin all over the finger-board,
till I was glad to get the instrument out of his hands.
The fact is, the coarse playing, so effective on the Parade,
was intolerable indoors. He was essentially a street player
a genius, but his music was, like coarse and effective
scene-painting, better a little way off. Once after that
I gave him a lunch at " Mutton's " ; but I found him dull,
servile, uneducated, and stupid to a degree, even about music.
I discovered that he could not write down his own arrange-
ments, which were so effective ; the modest harper, content to
efface himself, did it all, and BENEVENTANO only provided the
general idea, and stamped the performance with his strongly-
flavoured and dramatic genius, which drew the half-crowns.
Ah, SIGNOR BENEVENTANO ! your qualities are too rare.
There are plenty who can play the violin better than you,
but would never arrest the passer by. You were a child of
Nature more than of Art, but you had just that one touch
which makes the whole world kin ; and the hundreds that
nightly listened to you with rapt and breathless attention,
did not know and did not care what school you belonged
to, for you held the golden key of passion that unlocks all
hearts.
77
III.
CAMBRIDGE.
1856-1859.
I WENT up to Trinity College in 1856. I was completely
alone. I had an introduction to DR. WHEWELL, the Master
of Trinity. But what was DR. WHEWELL to me,
DK. or I to DR. WHEWELL? Something, strange
AND to say, we were destined still to be to each other.
BEDGWICK. f^.f ,, .
Of this more anon.
Soon after passing my entrance examination, I was sum-
moned into the great man's presence. In the course of our
interview, I ventured rashly to say that I understood Cam-
bridge was more given to mathematics than to classics.
DR. WHEWELL replied, with lofty forbearance, that when I
had been a little longer at Cambridge I should possibly
correct that .opinion. As I bad entered under the college-
tutor, MR. MUNRO, perhaps the most famous Latin scholar
of the day, my remark was indeed an unfortunate one, most
fully displaying my simplicity and ignorance.
TVe Master questioned me as to my aims and ambitions.
I had none I told him so very simply I played the fiddle.
He seemed surprised ; but from the first moment of seeing
him I took a liking to him, and I believe he did to me. He
had been seldom known to notice a Freshman personally,
unless it were some public school-boy of distinction. After
re CAMBRIDGE.
my first interview, I was closely questioned at dinner in hall,
when I found that WHEWELL was regarded as a sort of ogre,
not to be approached without the utmost awe, and to be
generally avoided if possible. Of this I had been happily
ignorant ; and, indeed, there had been nothing to alarm me
in the great man. His physique was that of a sturdy miner j
his face, to my mind, noble, majestic, and, as most thought,
ugly. But I shall never look upon his like again. His
walk was impressive ; his flowing gown gathered negligently
about him. I can see him now, as he stalked across the
quad into the Trinity Lodge. He was one of Nature's intel-
lectual monarchs. His reputation was world-wide. I shall
never forget that broad forehead, with its bushy eye-brows,
and those flashing eyes. I remember him so very dis-
tinctly as he used to sit in the Master's stall at chapel ;
his very presence seemed to lend a certain dignity to that
light and inattentive assembly of collegians, most of whom
only "turned up" to be "pricked off/' under pain of being
"hauled up/' In the companion stall sat another noble
figure, PROFESSOR SEDGWICK, also of European fame, then
professor of geology, and far advanced in years.
Grand old WHEWELL ! encyclopaedic mind ! Genial, elo-
quent Scdgwick! most loving teacher of fossil truth! Where
are your successors? Ye were men of large and monumental
type. When you departed, one after the other, the very
university seemed to shrink. I look back at that time
Whewell, Sedgvick, Donaldson, Munro, all in office to-
DE. WHEWELL. 79
gether at Cambridge, whilst Macaulay, Livingstone, Owen,
Lord Lawrence, and Tennyson came to dine as guests
at the Trinity high table, and appeared in chapel after-
wards. Truly there were giants in the land in those
days 1
Whewell, who contrived to say something rude to every-
body he knew sooner or later, never but once spoke a harsh
word to me. It was on this wise. lie had a particular
objection to undergraduates standing on the Trinity bridge
and looking over into the river. I suppose he thought it
mere idleness which, indeed, it generally was. I was in
feeble health at the time, and one morning I was looking
over the bridge, in the mild sunshine of spring, into the
river. By came the master, with his rapid and magisterial
stride.
" I '11 thank you, Mr. Ilaweis/' he said abruptly, " not to
loiter on the bridge/' and he swept past me angrily, before
ever I had time to cap him. I am glad now even of that
little memory.
His intellect was immense, his knowledge vast, his virtues
many and. great, his nature rugged and combative, and his
kindness of heart undoubted ; his faults were all on the sur-
face they were of an irritating and offensive character, and
any fool could carp at them. I was not fool enough to be
annoyed at the great man's brusqueness, and before long I
had other proofs of his gentleness, forbearance, and even
genuine humility. On one occasion, in all the conceit and
80 CAMBRIDGE.
" bumptiousness " of a freshman, I wrote a saucy letter in
the newspaper, reflecting upon the manner in which the
Vice-Chaucellors selected the university preachers. Whe-
well was Vice-Chancellor, and I repented and apologised to
him. I have his letter now; kind, gentle, and dignified,
without a touch of harshness, with advice like a father's.
Whewell's evening parties called by the freshmen Whe-
well's " Stand-ups," because undergraduates were not
supposed to " sit " on these solemn occasions were most
abhorred in my time ; but I lived to see a great change.
The Master married, during my term of college life,
Lady Affleck, a charming person, and from the time she
became mistress at the Lodge the rugged old lion seemed
to grow affable, and gentle, and apparently eager to do
what he could to make people " at home/' I have seen
his wife go up to him and whisper in his ear, and the
Master would nod approval, and thread his way at her
bidding through the crowd of guests to someone who had
to be introduced or noticed. The parties at the Lodge
"grew suddenly pleasant and sought after; the men sot
down and chatted, and Lady Affleck a thing unknown in
Whewell's lonely days introduced the undergraduates to
the young ladies present.
When he married, the Master did a very graceful thing.
He sent for me one morning, brought Lady Affleck into
the drawing-room, and said in his bluff way, " Mr. Haweis,
WHEWELL AND MUSIC. 81
[ wish you to know LADY AFFLECK, my wife. She is musical ;
she wishes to hear your violin." The Master then left me
with her, and she got me to arrange to come and play
at the Lodge on the following night at a great party. I
was to bring my own accompanyist. I had played at
DR. WHEWELL'S before that night, but that night the master
paid me special attention. It was part of his greatness
and of his true humility to recognise any sort of merit,
even when most different in kind to his own.
WHEWELI/S ability was of a truly cosmic and universal
character, but nature had denied him one gift the gift of
music. He always beat time in chapel, and
56.
generally sang atrociously out of tune. I do
AND MUSIC. ,1 . , i i j . -i .
not think he had any ear; music to him was
something marvellous and fascinating; he could talk learn-
edly on music, admire music, go to concerts, have music
at his house, worry over it, insist upon silence when
it was going on ; and yet I knew, and he knew that
I knew, that he knew nothing about it; it was a closed
world to him, a riddle, yet one he was incessantly bent
upon solving, and he felt that I had the key to it and he
had not.
On that night I played ERNST'S " Elegie," not quite so
hackneyed then as it is now, and some other occasional
pieces by ERNST, in which I gave the full rein to my fancy.
The Master left his company, and taking a chair in front
6
82 CAMBRIDGE.
of where I stood, remained in absorbed meditation during
the performance.
I was naturally a little elated at this mark of respect
shown to an unknown freshman in the presence of so many
" Heads " of Houses and the elite of the University. I
played my best and indulged rather freely in a few more
or less illegitimate dodges, which I thought calculated to
bewilder the great man. I was rewarded, for at the close
DR. WHEWELL laid his hand upon my arm. "Tell me one
thing; how do you produce that rapid passage, ascending
and descending notes of fixed intervals ?" I had simply
as a tour de force glided my whole hand up and down
the fourth open string, taking, of course, the complete series
of harmonics up and down several times and producing thus
the effect of a rapid cadenza with the utmost ease ; the
trick only requires a certain lightness of touch, and a
knowledge of where and when to stop with effect. I replied
that I had only used the series of open harmonics which
are yielded, according to the well-known mathematical law,
by every stretched string when the vibration is interrupted
at the fixed harmonic nodes. The artistic application of
a law which, perhaps, he had never realised but in theory
seemed to delight him intensely, and he listened whilst I
repeated the cadenza, and again and again showed him the
various intervals on the finger-board, where the open har-
monics might be made to speak ; a hairVbreadth one way
or the other producing a horrid scratch instead of the sweet
, MY NEIGHBOURS. 83
flute-like ring. It struck him as marvellous how a violinist
could hit upon the various intervals to such a nicety, as to
evoke the harmonic notes. I replied that this was easy
enough when the hand was simply swept up and down the
string as I had done, but that to hit upon the lesser nodes
for single harmonics was one of the recognised violin
difficulties. I then showed him a series of stopped har-
monics, and played, much to his surprise, a tune in stopped
harmonics. He was interested to hear that PAGANINI had
been the first to introduce this practice, which has since
become common property. But I have a little antici-
pated.
After the anxiety of my entrance examination at Trinity
College, which I passed without glory, I solaced my lone-
liness by making as much noise as ever I could
MY on my violin. I had three rooms at the furthest
LS ' extremity of the old court leading into the
Bishop's Hostel. Open windows commanding two Quads
made me a very formidable and undesirable neighbour.
Incessant practising with a saloon pistol with which I
was a crack shot on my doors added a general liveliness
to the situation. Occasionally I received midnight expostu-
lations. It was agreed at last that firing was not to go
on after eight o'clock, nor music after ten. This latter
rule was, I admit, more honoured in the breach than the
observance, and often have I seen MR. FROST or JOHN
6 *
84 CAMBRIDGE.
LUNN musical fellows of neighbouring colleges pounding
away in their shirt-sleeves, cigar in mouth, at my piano
till past midnight, while I myself, the present EARL OF
MAR, and MR. GEORGE COOKE still a notable violoncello
player in London (1883) &c., made up the quartet or
quintet in the rear. The consumption of beer and buttered
muffins after tea was unusually large on certain hot nights.
The listeners who stepped in to smoke and chat, declared
that under the infliction of music additional support was
absolutely needed. The dean occasionally sent polite and
deprecatory messages from over the way, whilst Messrs.
HAMMOND and BURN, fellows of Trinity, who " kept " just
underneath me on the same stair-case, exhibited a certain
angelic forbearance with the pandemonium upstairs which,
after the lapse of twenty -five years, I cannot sufficiently
admire.
My mathematics may have been weak, and my classics
uncertain, but it was impossible to ignore my existence. I
had not been up a fortnight when the president
58.
i PLAT A of the Cambridge University Musical Society
called upon me. He believed I played the
violin. " How did he know that ? " I asked. He laughed
out, " Everybody in the place knows it." Then and there
he requested me to join the Musical Society, and play a
solo at the next concert. I readily agreed, and from that
time I became solo violinist at the Cambridge Musical
I PLAY A SOLO. 85
Society, and played a solo at nearly every concert in the
Town Hall for the next three years.
I confess to some nervousness on my first public appear-
ance at a University Concert. It was a grand night.
STERNDALE BENNETT, our new professor of music, himself
conducted his " May Queen/' and I think MR. COLERIDGE,
an enthusiastic amateur and old musical star at the University,
since very well known in London, sang. I had selected as
my cheval de bataille, RODE'S air in G with variations, and
to my own surprise, when my turn came to go on, I was
quite shaky. The hall was crammed, the Master of Trinity
sat in the front row with other heads of colleges and their
families. I tuned in the ante-room. Someone offered me
a glass of wine. I had never resorted to stimulants before
playing, but I rashly drank it ; it was in my head at once.,
STERNDALE BENNETT conducted me to the platform. I was a
total stranger to the company a freshman in my second
month only. My fingers felt limp and unrestrained, my
head was half swimming. The crowd looked like a mist.
I played with exaggerated expression. I tore the passion to
tatters. I trampled on the time. I felt the excess of
sentiment was bad, and specially abhorrent to STERNDALE
BENNETT, who followed my vagaries like a lamb, bless him
for ever !
But the thing took. The style was new ; at least it was
unconventional and probably daring, for I really hardly knew
what I was about. The Air was listened to in dead silence,
8G CAMBRIDGE.
half out of curiosity no doubt ; but a burst of applause
followed the last die-away notes. I plunged into the
variations; I felt my execution slovenly and beneath my
usual mark ; but I was more than once interrupted by
applause, and at the close of the next cantabile movement of
extreme beauty, which I played better a sort of meditation
on the original air the enthusiasm rose to fever pitch ;
men stood up in the distant gallery and waved their caps,
and I remained holding my violin, unable to proceed with
the last rapid variation. When silence was restored I
played this atrociously; I hardly played it at all, it was
quite wild. STERNDALE BENNETT, seeing that it was all up
with me that night, hurried and banged it through anyhow ;
but the critical faculty of the room was gone, so was my
head ; I had won by a toss, and although then, and often
afterwards, owing to neglect of practice, I was frequently
not up to my own mark, my position as solo violinist at the
University Concerts was never disputed up to the time that
I took my degree.
My most extensive effort was DE BERIOT'S first concerto,
which I played through by heart, of course, with full
orchestra. It did not go well, the band was not
oy.
OLDDOO perfectly drilled and too often smothered me;
Ar ' but I was bent on playing with a full orchestra,
and I had my will ; but I never repeated the experiment at
those concerts. As I was invariably encored I taxed my
OLD DOG TRAY. 87
ingenuity to devise new sensations. " Old Dog Tray," the
words of which were at that time very familiar, was a
favourite encore, the first verse taken cheerfully, and each
verse up to the sausage verse increasing in pathos and
emotion until the climax was reached in
Some tempting mutton pies
In which I recognise
The flavour of my old dog Tray.
Old dog Tray he was faithful, etc. etc.
The audience were never tired of following the sound-
drama conducted by me through its various stages, until the
sausage verse invariably broke down amidst roars of laughter.
In my first terra, as I have intimated, I had formed a
quartet society, which met in my rooms. The two violins
were the EARL OP MAR and mvself : the tenor
60.
MY QUAKTET varied, but MR. GEORGE COOKE was our standing
violoncello. HAYDN, in some respects the greatest
quartet writer, was our staple, but we went into MOZART and
BEETHOVEN, and we worked up the great BEETHOVEN septet
with the assistance of the piano. The Canzonet quartet and
MENDELSSOHN'S quintet were amongst our favourites, but the
last movement in the great quintet was a piece de resistance
which we never quite overcame.
To this close and genial little society I owe my practical
acquaintance with most of the famous quartets. I was a
great deal too much " about " to do any real good with
88 CAMBRIDGE.
classics or mathematics. I was playing somewhere nearly
every night, and had the entree at most evening parties held
at the Trinity Lodge, the Master of Sidney- Sussex,
DR. PHELPS brother of the great actor St. John's,
Catherine's Hall (PHILPOTT'S, now Bishop of Worcester),
HARVEY GOODWIN (now Bishop of Carlisle), &c. My town
connection was also pretty extensive. At the house
of my kind friends, MR. and MRS. B-. POTTS (of Euclid
celebrity), I was ever welcome. There I met ADAMS, of
comet celebrity; BABINGTON, who popped a little American
weed into the Cam one day, which choked all the rivers in
England for several years. Many other scholars and men
of science were frequent visitors at MR. POTTS' house on
Parker's Piece, but I think I was perhaps as frequent as
any of them.
HENRY KINGSLEY, Fellow and Tutor of Sidney, met me
at the house of HOPKINS, the eminent mathematician, one
6i. night, and was so pleased with my playing of
HENBY BEETHOVEN'S F sonata that he gave me the
KINGSLEY
AND TURNEE. w hole set. He took me to his room and showed
me a most interesting series of TURNER'S water-colours,
of which he was a great collector. He pointed out the
rapidity and eager fidelity of TURNER'S work. Two extra-
ordinary water-colour studies of a descending avalanche in
the Alps struck me very much. TURNER had dashed off
the first where the snow cataract began, and, rushing to
HENRY KINGSLEY AND TURNER 89
another spot lower down the mountain, he was just in
time to make another sketch before the avalanche had
reached the bottom. I also saw several sketches all
blurred. TURNER had doubled up the paper, wet as it
was, arid put it into his pocket, thus destroying his work
as soon as he had " taken his observation." In others
the rapid painter had dabbled away quickly over a folded
crease of the paper. KINGSLEY had stretched it, cut out
the white angle, and joined together the parts that tallied.
My father had been a great admirer of TURNER, and
a great reader of RUSKIN. I could just remember
TURNER'S later pictures appearing in the Academy, and
I distinctly remember my father's reading out passages
from the immortal Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice.
I was, therefore, prepared for KINGSLEY'S attentions ; and as
I was able to feed him with one art, he generously gave me
all the pleasure he could with another. I was very grateful
to KINGSLEY for his friendly appreciation. He never
treated me as merely a fiddler this was the tone of the
fellows and tutors and public schoolmen at my own college.
I began to see that if a man does one thing well, he cannot
easily get credit for doing anything else. I remembered
this when I went into the Church and dropped my violin.
I did not, indeed, spend much time at college over my class
work, but I spent long hours in the University library and
pored incessantly over DANTE, GOETHE, HEINE, and the
German philosophers HEGEL, FICHTE, SCHELLING, and
90 CAMBRIDGE.
the SCHLEGELS with dictionaries and translations. I had
a passion for writing, though, unfortunately, I had nothing
to say. Ma. W. G. CLARKE, the public orator, and one of
my examiners, whilst declaring my hand-writing to be
almost illegible a statement in which he was correct
observed with a friendly smile, which stung me (in my heart
full of literary ambition) to the quick, "More at home
with the violin bow, Mr. Haweis, than the pen eh?"
And I remember one night, when I was dining at the
Master of Sidney's, the great DOCTOR DONALDSON saying
across the table to HARVEY GOODWIN (now Bishop of
Carlisle), also one of my senate house examiners, "Well, I
never examined Mr. Haweis in classics or mathematics, but
I can bear witness that, whatever he may be in the senate
house, he invariably passes a brilliant examination in the
concert-room/'
I could never get the smallest recognition of any kind at
the University from the authorities for anything but music.
62. I tried hard for the prize poem on " Delhi/' for
' <TH l ON " tne English essay on "Mary Queen of Scots," in
"THE BEAK." vain. But my literary enthusiasm could not be
quenched, and, with the assistance of one or two clever
undergraduates, who have since risen to name and fame,
and whom I will therefore spare, I floated a University
magazine called The Lion.
My own contributions alone would have been quite
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. 91
enough to damn that preposterous serial ; but GEORGE OTTO
TUEVELYAN, Avho had just corne up from Harrow, thought it
would be well and pleasant to hasten the process. So he
issued The Bear, which consisted of short parodies of
articles that had appeared in The Lion. The thing was
cleverly and good-humouredly done, and to me the moral
was " stick to the fiddle." The Lion expired with a
bumptious roar in the third number ; it contained, however,
the only readable article I had yet written readable because
written from my heart on " MENDELSSOHN." We got a vast
deal of fun out of our little venture. The greatest success
was certainly in calling forth The Bear which slew it, and
a wag suggested that a new University magazine should be
started called David, to " slay both the Lion and the Bear."
From that time I ceased to instruct an ungrateful and
prejudiced University, but I continued for some years to
deluge the provincial press with columns of in-
63.
NEWSPAPEB flated bombast on a variety of topics, such as
transcendental metaphysics, the position of women,
and other matters about which I knew absolutely nothing.
A.S I now look back upon those scrap-books full of articles,
it is inconceivable to me how they ever got printed. But I
had always the pen of a ready writer, and along with it the
common misfortune of having very little to say. But such
matters only touch at certain points my musical life, and I
willingly return to my muttona.
92 CAMBRIDGE.
One day as I was sitting in my arm-chair with an open
book upon my knee, contemplating vaguely the row of
64. china musicians' heads on little brackets over
oLDVENUA: mv mail tel-piece. a knock came at the door.
A S i RAX(jK *
VISITOR, jyfy oa k -was sported/' and I accordingly " did
the dead." I was in no mood for interruption. In front
of me, in the centre of my china row of busts HANDEL,
MOZART, HAYDN, CHOPIN stood MENDELSSOHN'S bust,
raised above the rest and draped with black velvet, with
F.M.B. in gold on the velvet. The china face at times,
as the light caught the shadows about the delicate mouth,
seemed to smile down upon me. The high forehead sur-
rounded by wavy hair, the aquiline nose What? more
knockings ! I rose at last, and opening the door brusquely
was confronted by a strange figure with a sort of wide plaid
waistcoat, well-made frock-coat, heavily-dyed thin whiskers,
and dark wig (as I well saw when the broad-brimmed hat
was off), yellow gloves and patent boots. Middle-aged ?
No in spite of the wig and showy get up old, very old,
but oddly vigorous, inclined to embonpoint, ruddy, florid,
perhaps choleric face, marked features overspread now
with a beaming smile and a knowing twinkle in the rather
rheumy eyes.
I never saw such an odd man. My anger evaporated. I
laughed out almost, and instinctively extended my hand and
shook that of the irresistible stranger warmly, although I
did not know him from Adam.
OLD VENUA: A STRANGE VISITOR. 93
" Beg pardon," he said, " may I come in ? I tell you, my
friend, my name is VENUA never heard of me no matter
old VENUA knows you ; heard you play at the Town Hall
got the stuff in you ; you can play d d well ; you can
play better den dat nature gif you all dis gift you practise
and den you play like ze d 1 himself. Old VENUA, dey
say to me, he know all about it he can tell you how to
play. Forty year ago you should have heard me play de
fiddle by 1 play de fiddle now; gif me your fiddle
vonderful tone your fiddle where is your fiddle? "
All this was uttered without a pause, very rapidly.
The strange, rambling, stuttering, energetic, decided old
creature had now rolled into my room ; he had sat down and
pulled out an enormous silk pocket-handkerchief. Then an
old gold snuff-box. " This gif me by ze Grand Duke of
Hesse Darmstadt. You take a pinch. Oh no ! You are
young man. You know noding of snuff bad 'abit young
man, bad 'abit ! never you take snuff ! Old VENUA can't
get on widout his snuff. All de bigwigs take snuff with old
VENUA but where is your fiddle ? bring him out I say.
Vonderful tone let me see him."
What a jargon ! Was it Italian, French, or German-
English ? I could never make out. In an old book, only
the other day, I met with a short biography of a certain
VENUA, violinist, who flourished at the beginning of this
century. Old VENUA, of Cambridge, was undoubtedly this
man. He was very long past his prime and utterly for-
94 CAMBRIDGE.
gotten. I brought him out the fiddle ; he put it to
his chin ; in a moment I could see he had played
his touch, execution, all but his intonation were gone,
but his style was first-rate and his expression admirable
in intention.
From that day I and old VENUA became close allies. He
used to ask me to dine with him, generally on Sunday,
and his ceaseless flow of anecdote and dramatic style of
conversation amused me greatly.
He had known PAGANINI, he had seen BEETHOVEN, he had
chatted with SPOHR, he remembered the first Napoleon, He
mimicked HAYDN'S style of conversation, violin
65.
VENUA'S in hand, as though he had been intimate with
LK ' him too. Yet this was in 1859, and HAYDN died
in 1809.
" Gif me a sobjech," says HAYDN. " Zo ! here Tra-la-
doi-e-dee-dee, &c. &c. Zat will do, mem freund. HAYDN
. make you on zat sobjech a beautiful melody, and work it
wonderful ; gif you him a start off, he do all the rest. No
quartet like the HAYDN quartet, my young freund he is
the great master of the string instrument he knows the
just combinazione he gif all their due. SPOHR he all first
fiddle he make all de rest lacqueys to first fiddle. MEN-
DELSSOHN he make an orchestra of his quartet. BEETHOVEN
vonderful always. MOZART he learn all of HAYDN he come
after him and die before him. He never write quartet
VENUA'S TALK. 95
better zan de Papa HAYDN he find new ideas and he write
new things he great master of vat you call de form of
his composition but in de string quartet HAYDN ze great
creator a Brince a real Brince and founder of ze quartet
art!"
VENUA loved the violin, and his impromptu lectures upon
it taught me much always characteristic, humorous, genial,
and to the point.
" If you want to make a man irritable, discontented,
restless, miserable, give him a violin."
"Why? "said I.
" Because," he replied and I will now resume to some
extent the use of my own language " the violin is the most
exacting and inexorable of non-human things. A loose joint
somewhere and he goes ' tubby ' (a term used to express a
dull vibration), a worn finger-board and he squeaks, a bridge
too high and his note grows hard and bitter, or too low
and he whizzes, or too forward and one string goes loud,
or too backward and two strings go soft and weak ; and
the sound-post (i.e. the little peg which bears the strain on
the belly and back), mein Gott ! dat is de Teffel." But,
correcting himself, he added, " No, the French are right,
they call it the soul of the violin, I'dme du violon ; and it
is the soul if that is not right, all the fiddle goes wrong.
A man may sit the whole morning worrying the sound-post
a shade this way or that, and at last, in despair, he will give
it up ; then he will go to the bridge and waste his whole
96 CAMBRIDGE.
afternoon fidgeting it about, and then he will give that up.
A hair's-breadth this way with the bridge oh ! the fourth
string is lovely ; but, bah ! the second and third are killed ;
a little back then, and now the fourth is dead, and the
chanterelle (i.e. first string) sings like a lark misery ! it
is the only string vat sing at all. Give him a fiddle ! " cried
the old gentleman, gesticulating; "yes, give him a fiddle, it
will make him mad ! "
Interspersed with such droll exaggerations were excellent
hints, such as, "Leave your bridge and your sound-post
alone if ever you get the fiddle to sound near right ; don't
change your bridge unless you are absolutely obliged
sound-board, neck, head, nut, everything, but not the
bridge ; a fiddle and a bridge that have lived for years
together love each other as man and wife ; let them alone,
my young freund, vy make mischief ? " and old VENUA'S
eye twinkled as he chuckled at h?s own joke, and never
ceased talking and flourishing his arras.
It was VENUA who first taught me about the fabric of
the violin what my old master, OURY who was a pupil
of MORI first made me feel about violin playing a
tender love and sympathy for the instrument as well as
the art.
What was VENUA'S connection with Cambridge I never
could make out. He seemed independent. He had long
ceased to teach or play, yet he was frequently away, and
appeared only at intervals, always retaining the same lodg-
A CONCERT FREAK. 97
ings at Cambridge, and generally giving me a call when he
was in town. When I came up, about a year after leaving
the University, for my voluntary theological examination,
I inquired for my old friend VENUA ; but he was gone, and
no one could give me any news of him. I never saw him
again. He remained to me simply a detached episode in
my musical life.
I think it was in my second year (1838) at college that a
few friends, more enterprising than discreet, revealed to me
a design which promised to yield considerable
A CONCERT amusement, if not profit. They proposed to get
out large hand-bills" in a town some fifteen
miles away, stating that a distinguished foreign company,
consisting of Signer this, that, and the other, and Herr
so-and-so, would appear on a certain evening at the Town
Hall, and give a concert of an exceptionally attractive
character. I agreed to be of the party, and we all dis-
guised ourselves with false hair, I wearing a flowing beard
and ample moustache. We cultivated broken English.
Only one of us who acted as agent and made arrange-
ments at the inn, saw to the posters, and took the money
spoke our native tongue with anything like fluency.
We arrived about six o'clock; the concert was at eight.
We walked through the town in heavy great coats, well
muffled up, although it was now the middle of summer,
and admired the large bills on the hoardings ; my own
7 '
98 CAMBRIDGE.
name was specially big, as tbe celebrated German violinist,
HERB ERNSTEIN. Things were going merrily, and it was
rumoured that we should have a full room, when at six
o'clock the news arrived in the town that one of the most
respectable inhabitants of the place had been run over on
the railway. This cast a sudden gloom over the place.
There was talk about postponing the concert, but several
people had taken tickets, and we felt bound to go through
with it. Very few, however, turned up, and the attendance
was so thin that it became a question whether we should
not offer the audience their money back and suspend
operations, out of deference to the wide-spread feeling. We
ultimately compromised the matter by going through with
the first part of the concert only. We none of us made
our fortunes that night, and we returned to Cambridge by
the last train rather crest-fallen, and considerably after
midnight.
The moon was shining brightly, the air was warm and
balmy. We walked from the station to the old market-
place. None of us had the courage to repair
67.
MUSIC AKD to our colleges ; besides, we had all provided
T> ourselves with exeats, so that our reappearance
about one o'clock in the morning would have looked, to
say the least, odd.
The Cambridge market-place was deserted. We held a
council of war. We were in no particular hurry, and as
MUSIC AND MOONLIGHT. 99
we could not make up our minds what to do, I took
out my violin, sat down on a stone-slab, and waked the
echoes.
Out of a dark side-street presently strode, or rather
shuffled up, a strange-looking man. As I played on he
sidled up to me and stood gazing at me in mute
astonishment. When I ceased he gasped out :
"Who be you, Sir?"
"Who should you think?" I said.
" Dun-no, Sir; never 'eered anything like it afore in all
my born days ! "
" Fond of music ? " I said cheerfully, and was preparing
to give him another taste of my quality, when he laid
his grimy hand on my arm, and peering into my face,
said:
"You jist tell me one thing, Sir. Be you one of the
gents that's a coming down next week with MR. JULLIEN'S
band?"
" Why if they 're only coming down next week, I should
say not."
My companion, our agent, here plucked me by the sleeve ;
he had gained admittance to an inn hard by, and it being
now nearly two o'clock we concluded to turn in. I have
come to the conclusion that adventures of this kind are
better before and afterwards; at the time they are often
but poor sport, but they are anticipated with pleasure and
recalled with interest. I am not aware that our secret
7 *
100 CAMBRIDGE.
was ever betrayed, or that our escapade was ever dis-
covered.
Towards the close of my career at Cambridge a sort of
rival to the Musical Society sprang up, which met at Sidney
Hall, and was largely choral. MRS. ELLICOTT
68.
MRS. (wife of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol) was
the vocal star at Cambridge in my time, and her
services were usually in request whenever the concert could
by any stretch of imagination be called of a private or
a collegiate character. On special occasions, however, the
Fitzwilliam programme admitted instrumental music, and
the last occasion on which I played in public at Cambridge
was when I led BEETHOVEN'S Grand Scptuor for the Fitz-
william Society in Sidney Hall.
What my life at Cambridge might have been without my
violin I cannot say. Had I worked harder at Latin, Greek,
and mathematics, I sometimes ask myself, Who
D7i
WHAT DOTH would have been the better for it now ? Had
I even got a fellowship, should I have been
the better for it then? Had I read less miscellaneously,
written less voluminously, played less habitually, and
known half a dozen studious men only, instead of hun-
dreds of all sorts, during those three years of college
life, should I have been better or worse fitted for my
after life than the studious men who went up with me
WHAT DOTH IT PROFIT? 101
were for theirs ? Where are those studious men ? One of
the cleverest drank himself to death in India. Another
senior wrangler and not the only one I have known
suffer thus became unfit for several years for all mental
exertion, and is now a lawyer like any other lawyer. Some
have subsided into the Church and are forgotten in country
livings, useful, obscure, happy. Others were expected to do
great things, but have not done them. Some are professors ;
others fellows of colleges, like other fellows of colleges ;
many are married and in every sense done for, and many
are dead ; a few have risen to eminence, but these were in
no one instance the men who attained the very highest
honours. CECIL RA.IKES, who usually sat opposite me in hall
and was freshman in my year, is, I suppose (1883), in the
running for the highest Parliamentary prizes. GEORGE OTTO
TREVELYAN, who came up in my second year, always brilliant,
many-sided, genial, has added to his versatile acquirements
the qualities of a leading statesman. FAWCETT, also my con-
temporary, is another remarkable instance of academical
distinction and Parliamentary success. I cannot at this
moment recall any distinguished writer, man of science,
la\yyer, or divine now before the world, who, during that
time (1857-9), also obtained the highest honours at Cam-
bridge, but others might probably assist my memory.
Of this I am certain, that the academical course paralyses
some, develops others, and exerts over a considerable
number no sort of mental influence whatever. Over me the
102 CAMBRIDGE.
academical course exerted no sort of mental influence what-
ever. I shall perhaps be told that this was my own fault.
Perhaps it was. I knew as much mathematics, and quite
as much Latin and Greek, when I went up as when I took
my degree. If I knew more history and philosophy, that was
not due to the University training the history and philo-
sophy which the University required was just the sort of
history and philosophy I did not happen to know. Almost
all the knowledge which has been of any real use to me in
the world I have acquired since my University proclaimed
me Master of Arts. All that sort of knowledge which has
enabled me to make money by my pen, to write books,
to preach sermons, to give Royal Institution lectures,
to organise parishes, to write leaders and edit journals,
is of a kind which the University training not only does
not impart, but tends rather to discourage.
The highest University training wins the highest Univer-
sity prizes, but it does not fit men for the highest honours
which the world has to give. These are won generally by
your good all-round men, your good classic, your senior
optime or low wrangler ; and sometimes as in the case of
TENNYSON, who won the Prize Poem at Cambridge, or my
late lamented friend, the historian J. R. GREEN at Oxford
(both good classics) by men who have attained little if
any University distinction in either classics or mathematics.
That I did not profit as I ought to have done by the
studies of the place I freely admit. That I fiddled away
WITH GARIBALDI. 103
much of my time I cannot deny. But that I wasted it I
cannot allow, although a M.A. degree is all the academical
result I have to show for three years of elaborate and
expensive training at Trinity College, Cambridge.
IV.
ITALY.
18GO.
1 TOOK my degree in 1859 and disappeared from, the
University for more than a year. I was still not in good
health, and my father thought that a little
WITH foreign travel might be good for me. I started
with 80 to begin with, for Italy via Paris, and
with strict injunctions to keep out of the way of the Italian
Revolution then going on under GARIBALDI, and, I may
add, CAVOUR. How I was nearly roasted alive travelling
straight through from Paris to Milan in the middle of June ;
how I found myself at Genoa in the autumn, and, being
seized with the fever of the Revolution, went straight down
to Naples, assisted at the siege of Capua saw GARIBALDI
on the battle-field heard him address the mob at Naples
witnessed the entrance of VICTOR EMMANUEL into Naples,
induced him to write his memoirs, and corresponded with
him, narrowly escaped assassination on the Chiaja, saw
CAVOUR, RICASOLI, the young princes, the beautiful and
104 ITALY.
unfortunate Queen of Naples, TURR, COZENZ, MEDICI, ROXDI,
one of GARIBALDI'S aides-de-camp, and all the Garibaldian
heroes with whom I mixed daily at St. Angelo, Caserta,
Capua, Santa Maria, and Naples; saw, for the first time,
Pope Pius IX. (to whom I was presented twenty years
afterwards), and was just in time to assist at the peace
celebrations and great Te Deum at Milan, in the presence of
the King and CAVOUR and DELLA MARMORA ; all these and
many other golden memories of the sunny south in the great
historical year A.D. 1860 belong to another side of my auto-
biography, which I shall probably never think it worth while
to write.
The part which music played in the Italian Revolution
was remarkable. A certain gay and intrepid march tune,
characteristically called " Garibaldi's Hymn,"
GARIBALDI'S was shouted, blown, scraped, and rattled on
drums in and out of season. The whole spirit
of the volunteer movement seemed to be in it. "When I
first heard it at Genoa, it sounded poor and common-
place; but as day by day and all day long it sounded in
my ears, it began at last to ring in my head ; and by the
time I got to Naples I was humming and whistling it
with all the world. To see the jaunty, ragged volunteers
marching along the hot roads covered with white marble
dust, and keeping pace to " Garibaldi's Hymn," is one of
my most vivid memories. It was to Italians of 18GO what
OF GARIBALDI'S HANDWRITING.
A LETTER FROM GARIBALDI. 105
the "Marseillaise" was to the French of 1793 but as
much purer and more joyous than that fierce and gloomy
stave, as the movement for freedom under GARIBALDI and
MAZZINI was brighter and purer than the confused and
murderous cries for liberty in 1793 under ROBESPIERRE
and DANTON.
The most interesting memorials of GARIBALDI that
72. remain to me are his autograph letters and his
A FitoM ER ^^' mem i rs - I h ave printed a fac-simile of a
GARIBALDI, short note, one of several received about that
time. The following is a translation :
Caprera, February 8, 1870.
MY DEAR HAWEIS,
Thank you for your kind invitation to take up my quarters
in your house, but I am not going to England just at present. I write
to you by this courier in Italian : let me know whether it is indifferent
to you whether I write in French or Italian. I received the numbers of
The Argosy with your account of me, and I am grateful to you for
them.
Yours,
G. GARIBALDI.
Looking back upon that exciting time 1 marvel at my
good fortune. How I escaped the chances of disease and
73. danger of all kinds, through which I passed
IIAIR-
scathless, I cannot imagine. A special Provi-
BREADTH
ESCAPES, dence must have been watching over me. I
travelled nine months in Italy, after losing my great-coat
and having most of my luggage stolen. I neglected every
106 ITALY.
precaution and risked every danger. During the siege of
Capua I was more than once nearly shot by the Neapolitan
riflemen, twice on the point of assassination, and I narrowly
escaped being blown to pieces by a shell at the batteries of
St. Angelo.
To help the poor Garibaldians in the camp, I nearly
starved myself outside the walls of Capua during the
bombardment. They had my brandy, and my biscuits,
and my cash ; often too my broken-down horse, and at my
Naples hotel the houseless and purseless ones sometimes
shared even my bedroom. All day long, under a burning
sun, I got soaked to the skin, with little get-at-able to
eat or drink, but coffee and bread in the morning and
some wretched apology for a meal at night. Provisions
were scarce, and every restaurant in Santa Maria was
cleaned out. A light shawl was all I had to keep off chill,
malaria, and fever raging all round me. I drank freely the
polluted water of Naples. I ate freely its dangerous red
melons, inhaled the pestiferous air of its overcrowded back
streets, in that monstrously unsanitary and overcrowded
time ; yet not once had I a touch of fever or any ailment
whatever, except fits of exhaustion consequent upon over-
heating and over-excitement, under-feeding and general
bodily fatigue. My rickety constitution, which the dis-
astrous malady of my boyhood had failed to shatter, must
have been made of iron, and I dare say I shall live to the
age of Methusalch. I remember now how the small-pox
MUSIC IN ITALY 107
spared me when it raged as an epidemic in my first parish,
St. Peter's, Bethnal Green ; how the cholera spared rne when
it raged in my second East End parish, St. Peter's, Stepney.
People who enjoy this kind of luck usually get hit at last ;
but I cannot but reflect, with wonder and thankfulness, that
during the twenty years I have been in the Church, preach-
ing in London on an average twice every Sunday, although
often feeble and suffering, I have seldom been absent from
my pulpit, and never once been unable to officiate, through
indisposition. I think few even of the more robust of the
London clergy can say as much.
I was greatly struck by the musfcal poverty of Italy.
Even the performances in the Scala at Milan were poor in
comparison with the London and Paris opera-
MUSIC IN houses. The street music at Naples and at
Venice was characteristic. In Florence and
Pisa the guitar was played with a certain elan by the
young men as they walked home at night, trolling out
some graceful love-song or drinking ditty with light
chorus, very different from our heayy drinking choruses.
But the mechanical organs, with their eternal fragments of
VERDI, were extremely wearisome, and the Italian pianoforte-
playing, even when good, had little charm for ears accus-
tomed to the inspirations of BEETHOVEN, SCHUMANN,
MENDELSSOHN, CHOPIN, and MOZART. Still, the romance
school of the pianoforte in Italy is a distinct one and not
103 ITALY.
to be ignored. FUMAGALLI was a man of real genius, who
died too young ; and TITO MATTEI now resident in England,
has won many converts to the brilliant, sentimental, and
sensational style ever dear to the heart of the Italian.
But the classical reaction at Rome (1883), under SIGXOR
SGAMBATI, threatens to make serious way. Less fertile in
melody than VERDI, and more severe than LISZT, it may
end in falling between two stools ; but the ability of its
founder and leader, SGAMBATI, is undoubted, and was
duly recognised when he appeared in London, in 1882,
at the Philharmonic and Crystal Palace concerts, as well
as at an Italian matinee at my house, when he played
with the Florentine violinist PAPINI, the Sicilian baritone
VERGARA, and my old friend of good Garibaldian intentions,
SIGNOR Li CALSI.
I have a few charming memories connected with music
in Italy, but they all circle round my valued friend,
C. H. DEACON, now so well known and so justly
75.
ALONK AT esteemed in the musical world of London. I
arrived at Milan one Friday. The sun was
pitilessly hot, the sky wearisomely blue. Sick, worn-out
with all-night travel, for the first time in my life hundreds
of miles away from any human being who cared whether I
was dead or alive, my spirits were at their lowest ebb.
I got in about the middle of the day, and, depositing my
one portmanteau at the Hotel " Reale/' wandered aimlessly
ALONE AT MILAN. 109
out into the broiling streets, and, being hungry and faint,
entered a cafe. Everyone seemed half asleep; no one
understood French, and so no one understood me. It
was evidently not eating time at Milan. I could not
touch the black coffee and stale sponge-cakes, so I got
back to my bedroom, ordered a lemonade, and lay down
thinking of " Home, sweet Home," and the friends in
Brunswick Square, Brighton, whom I might have been
lunching with had I not been such a fool as to come to
Italy. I lodged at my capital Milanese hotel (1860)
breakfast, bed, and dinner for 7 frs. a day. At Florence
and Rome the prices in those days were but 8 frs., and at
Genoa 6 frs. I had not spoken to a soul for many
hours. I never felt so utterly lost and alone before, nor
have I ever felt so since. The second day I met at the
table d'hote a friendly face, the face of a good and genial
man. It was the REV. C. H. ANDREWS, then English
chaplain at Milan. I solaced myself with some talk.
The English Church service was held in a large room in
our hotel. The next day was Sunday. I went to service
in the morning. It was like sitting by the waters of
Babylon; but I saw some English faces in that strange
land, and began to take courage. ANDREWS was my only
resource, so towards ANDREWS'S door I made my way in
the afternoon.
On entering, I found a gentleman seated thin face,
full moustache, well-dressed, refined in manner, and
110 ITALY.
charming in conversation. I was about to retire when
both bade me be seated. ANDREWS at once presented me
to this stranger. It was Mr. C. H. DEACON, the pillar
o the English Church at Milan, and general friend and
benefactor of all itinerant and homeless tourists who
drifted into the English Church on their way through
Milan.
To MR. and MRS. DEACON since members of my con-
gregation in London and my good friend ANDREWS, I owe
some of my happiest hours in Italy. On the hot
GOLDEN nights ANDREWS and I, now become great friends,
used to make our way naturally to DEACON'S
charming house, and there, at the invitation of MRS.
DEACON most delightful of hostesses drink unlimited tea
and make music. I had not brought my violin to Italy I
should certainly have lost it if I had. I lost nearly every-
thing that I had with me in Italy that year. I never
touched a violin in Italy, but I soon found that DEACON
was a splendid pianist ; and at his house I met PEZZE, the
violoncellist, and SESSA, the violinist. DEACON introduced
me to REYNOLDS, who called himself Vice-Consul; and I
remember that LORD BYRON'S cook, who was still living,
served us up an admirable dinner one night at the Consul's
residence.
The heat being overpowering, and the natives having
chosen that moment for clearing the drains at my hotel,
A STRANGE BELL. Ill
the place became little better than a pest-house, and we con-
cluded to go to the lakes. We went to Corao. There DEACON
joined us.
I think it was in the Italian Alps that I first noticed the
poetical effect of bells. The sound of convent bells across
the Lake of Lugano, or over Corao. where the
77.
A STRANGE sound is hemmed in between Carddenabbia and
Bellagio, is to me full of haunting memories.
There were other bells, too, on the Lake of Como, of a very
puzzling kind, as will appear from what follows.
^ The deceptiveness of bell-sounds upon the water can only
be compared to the deceptiveness of objects seen lying under
the water, and the refraction of sound-waves to the ear is
about equal to the refraction of light- waves to the eye. I
remember rowing on the Lake of Como on one still summer
night, and I heard what seemed to me the clear tinkle of a
goat-bell, which I supposed to be coming from the sloping
banks of the lake. Distant it certainly seemed, and yet
singularly distinct. As I rowed on, it still sounded from
afar, when suddenly through the darkness I heard a loud
Italian oath from a boat a short distance from me. I paid
no attention, but rowed on ; the boat rowed after me with
a flood of Italian Billingsgate. My mettle was now up, and,
shipping oars, I repaired to the stern, and replied with all
the strength and vivacity which my small acquaintance with
Italian slang permitted.
112 ITALY.
Of the cause of dispute I was utterly ignorant, but I
thought an unprovoked attack deserved a spirited reply ;
and so I freely devoted my unknown friend to the Diavolo,
"Mars, Bacchus, Virorura/' and the other pagan deities to
which, by his vocabulary, I deemed him to be most partial.
Between the pauses o our brisk civilities I heard the clear
tinkle of the distant goat-bell (what had that to do with
him ?) and the chiming of the convent clocks all along the
shore of the lake, when, suddenly leaning over the boat, my
hand touched a large cork, on which hung a floating bell,
and I perceived I had for some time been dragging, entangled
astern, the fisherman's night-line, with its alarum destined
to give warning against such marauders as myself. Th'e
distant bell, in fact, had been swinging close under my nose !
There was no goat only a cork, and my friend thought I
was making a night-raid upon his fish ! At that moment
our boats met, and instead of coming to blows we explained,
shook hands with much polite laughter, and, on one side at
least, paid up with effusion.
Our hotel at Carddenabbia overlooked the lake. There
was a grand piano in the great saloon, with a marble balcony
opening upon the water. Here, when the moon
78> was full upon Como, would DEACON play to us
FULL MOON.
after dinner. The music went out into the night.
The white mist bathed the opposite promontory of Bellagio.
I can just remember a face on the balcony in the twilight
A SUDDEN CHANGE. ]13
and eyes, too. I was in my twenty-third year. I
no longer sighed for Brunswick Square I was reconciled
to Italy.
V.
BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
1861-1861.
I HAD for years been an irregular student of theology, and
I had read very carefully most of the standard theological
books PEARSON. BUTLER. PALEY. HOOKER and
79.
A SUDDEN also weighted myself heavily with the High
Church theology PUSEY, NEWMAN, MANNING,
KEBLE, Miss SEWELL, &c., besides reading MAURICE and
W. F. ROBERTSON. This preparation laid me peculiarly
open to the influence of Essays and Reviews, which I
eagerly devoured at Florence on my way home, and I
was soon afterwards further enlightened by the writings of
JOWETT and COLENSO. These last are the men who gave me
some hope for the future of the Church of England. The
seed of something like an enlightened and liberal theology
seemed to be sown. Theology soon absorbed the whole of
my attention, and music went to the wall on my return
from Italy. I went up to Cambridge for my voluntary
theological examination in 1861, was ordained the same year,
8
114 BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
went straight to my lodgings, in the district of St. Peter's,
Hackney Road, Bethnal Green, and my violin career was
virtually closed.
From the time that I entered the Church I have never
played to any real purpose. I resolved to make that sacri-
fice, and no subsequent reflection has led me to
repent of my decision. I could never have
A SACRIFICE.
played the violin by halves, and had I come up
to London and entered the Church in the character of a
fiddling parson, I should in all probability never have got
credit for, or applied myself seriously to win, any other
position. At all events, I should have been heavily weighted
and laid myself open to many temptations. I should always
have been coming West in search of musical society and dis-
traction, and people would have said, as indeed my old
friends have said, and as my caricaturists continue to say,
" He should have stuck to the one thing which he could
do well, and not meddled with theology." These good
people sometimes gave me credit for having made an heroic
sacrifice. They knew nothing about it. The sacrifice I
made was a very small one. From the age of eight to
the age of twenty-three I had played the fiddle in season
and out of season. Applause had lost its charm for me.
I was hardened to flattery. My own critical taste dis-
enchanted me with my own performances. Nothing but the
best suited me, and I knew I never could attain to that as
AN EAST END PARISH. 115
an executant myself, because I never could take up the violin
professionally. Then, fiddling was not my only taste. I had
a passion for oratory, for literature, for the study of human
nature, and for church work. For a time my new parochial
sphere with its special enthusiasms expelled everything else.
I know not what glamour in those days hung over the
grimy and repulsive aspects of Bethnal Green life. The
reeking streets seemed beautiful to me in the
AN EAST END evening sunshine ; the unwashed and multitu-
dinous children, feeding on garbage in the
gutter, filled me with infinite tenderness and pity, the more
so because they seemed so happy ; the sick poor dying in
back rooms, the workhouse wards, the close factory houses
packed with pale girls starving at straw-bonnet work, the
old men eternally dipping dolls' heads, the button-hole
sewers, the infatuated weavers, descendants of the Huguenot
refugees, still working their antiquated hand-looms at famine
prices all these scenes of my daily life seemed to me then
exquisitely pathetic, novel, interesting, and exciting. I was
not in the least depressed by the surrounding misery; I
was not responsible for it. It was a problem to work at.
1 was strangely exhilarated by it. I was not left to struggle
alone. The aristocracy of my congregation were the small
tradespeople. They rallied round me nobly, and I loved
them ; they seemed to me infinitely good, and worthy, and
staunch. I dropped in to tea at the back of the shop. I
8 *
116 BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
cheered up the mother cumbered with much serving, and the
daughters with their smiling faces and ready hands were my
district visitors, and taught in the Sunday school.
In those happy and hopeful days, the late Mr. J. R.
GREEN, since famous as the author of A Short History of
82. the English People, was my constant companion
JOUN and close friend. He had a sole charge in the
RICHARD
GKEEN. neighbouring parish of Hoxton, and for some
two years we met almost daily ; we were facing the same
difficulties, discussing the same doubts, trying to solve the
same problems.
But this is no book concerning my clerical life. I hasten
to recover the thin golden thread of music, which still con-
tinued, and probably will continue to the end, to
OO.
MUSIC AND run through my days, hidden at times in the
>E8 ' complex fabric of the general life-work, but never
really lost or broken. Thousands around me were leading
dull lives of monotonous toil, with little refreshment or
variety, too much shut up to ihe beer-house or the counter,
tempted by want and gin, tempted also to all kinds of
chicanery and petty theft, and full of sordid aims. I deter-
mined to try the effect of music, and good music, upon
their narrow, busy, overburdened lives. I invited Mr.
C. H. DEACON, SIGNOR REGONDI incomparable on the
guitar and concertina and SIGNOR PEZZE to come down
MUSIC AND THE MASSES. 117
and give a concert in the national school-room. The prices
of admission were low Id. and 3d. The room \vas
crammed ; the music was a little over the people's heads ;
the respectable element predominated a little too much, as I
expected, but the class I aimed at was fairly represented.
The audience was hushed, attentive, a little awed, but
intensely appreciative. I did not play myself. No one had
heard me play there, so no one expected me to play then ;
and I might have lost my character as general manager and
president had I contributed to the programme in a musical
capacity. I confess the old war-horse within me began to
chafe and paw the ground, impatient for action, when the
players got well to work. I seemed to feel that my real
place was at their side. I had been too lately weaned, but
I kept my feelings to myself.
I believe in music as I believe in pictures for the masses.
It draws people together, oils the wheels of the social
system, and very much facilitates the intercourse between a
pastor and his flock. Music is better than penny readings
or lectures for this purpose, chiefly because penny readings,
as a rule, are so badly and stupidly conducted. For one
person who can attract attention by his reading or lecturing
there are a dozen who can excite interest among the poorer
classes by singing and playing; and professional musicians
are, as a rule, very kind and liberal in giving their services
if only a fit occasion presents itself.
Tea-meetings, speeches, and lectures were, however, easier
118 BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
to organize, and I was not long enough at Betlmal Green
hardly two years to test fairly by their frequency the good
of cheap concerts for the people parochially, nor was it my
own parish, nor had I entirely my own way. But the experi-
ment has been notoriously successful since, in the shape of
coffee music-halls and cheap entertainments for the people.
I am convinced that the influence of music over the poor
is quite angelic. Music is the hand-maid of religion and
the mother of sympathy. The hymns and hymn tunes
taken home by the children from church and chapel are
blessed outlets of feeling, and full of religious instruction
they humanize households all through the land. The Moody
and Sankey tunes have exercised a cheering and even
hallowing influence far and wide, in remote Welsh hamlets,
from Northumberland to Devonshire, in the crowded dens
of our manufacturing centres, and in lonely seaside villages.
Teach the people to sing, and you will make them happy ;
teach them to listen to sweet sounds, and you will go far
to render them harmless to themselves, if not a blessing to
their fellows.
Since my ordination I have, with great reluctance, and
under considerable pressure from old friends, broken
through my rule of never playing in public.
84.
LAST Once at St. Peter's, Stepney, where I was curate
APPEARANCES. for & ^ ori time ^ j ^^ &i & con cert, got
up for the edification of the parish, in the school-room.
LAST APPEARANCES. 119
The people, I think, were too much surprised thoroughly to
enjoy me in so completely novel and unexpected a character.
Again, at Saint James the Less, Westminster, at another
school-room concert, I played. There I think the feelings
of the audience were very mixed. A good many seemed
scandalised at a parson playing the fiddle at all. Others
were shocked at his performing thus publicly.
When invited by the late lamented MR. SPOTTISWOODE,
then President of the Royal Institution, to lecture on " Old
Violins " before that learned assembly, I certainly ventured
to touch some of the matchless violins lent me on that
occasion just sufficiently to illustrate a few points, and
demonstrate certain peculiarities of tone. But, although
sufficient for the purpose, my hand had lost its cunning, nor
shall I ever again play the violin at all to my own liking.
Indeed, I keep my Strad. in a cabinet behind glass. There
he rests unsounded and unstrung.
Before the end of the century he will probably pass out of
my hands. It is well that he should sleep awhile. I have
worked him hard enough in my day. About A.D. 1900 he
will probably emerge, fresh, powerful, and perhaps sweeter
than ever, to tell the unborn generations of the twentieth
century how great and magical an artificer was ANTONIUS
STRADIVARIUS CREMONENSIS, A.D. 1712.
If these famous old violins did not have these long periods
of rest they would soon be all worn out, and A.D. 2000 would
120 BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
only have them as museum specimens, no longer fit to be
played upon. It is the collector who keeps them
for years unstrung, and the violinists who lav
IN PACE.
them by and neither play upon them nor lend
them about, who are the real benefactors and conservers of
the Cremona gems. This thought often consoles me when
I look at the kind and faithful face of my old violin, or
take him out to pass my hand at times caressingly over
the dear, familiar maple back, polished and all aglow, like
transparent sunlit agate and so finely veined. I look at him
as he lies mute in my hands but not dead. Ah ! how he
used to sound beneath my bow in the crowded halls and at
gay scenes that have faded out for ever with the " days that
are no more/' Ay ! and how he shall sound again in other
hands, and sing rapturously to other hearts, long after my
hand has grown cold and my heart has ceased to beat.
The pulpit had now fairly taken the place of the violin.
Of course I wrote my sermons elaborately, so elaborately
that after I had written two I did not quite see
my way to writing a third, for the simple reason
NEW DUTIES.
that I had exhausted the whole range of Christian
teaching, practice as well as doctrine, and there did not
seem to me to be any more to say. Necessity, however,
is the mother of invention, and I contrived to go on reading
sermons at first to an empty church until I felt that some-
thing must be done. I had studied audiences in the concert
ORATORICAL AND ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT. 121
room. I had never uttered two words in public, but in the
Isle of Wight I had been occasionally in the habit of select-
ing a solitary hillock and addressing the cows in terras of
great eloquence on various topics of public interest.
This is not the place to dwell upon my early attempts at
extemporary preaching. Suffice it to say that the faculties
87. which make the success of a soloist are tempera-
THB mentally at least the same as those required by
ORATORICAL
AND the actor or the orator. Some intellectual power
ARTISTIC TEM-
PERAMENT, and a special cultivation are of course required
in addition, and it is quite as possible to be a good speaker
without having an ear for music as it is possible to have
an ear for music without being a successful soloist; but
it is not possible, without the dramatic intuition and
sympathetic temperament, to be a good soloist, actor,
speaker, or preacher. I found then that the time I had
spent in acquiring the art of dominating an audience in the
concert-room had not been wholly wasted. An orator is
sometimes said to play upon his audience as upon an old
fiddle. The simile is not ill chosen. The special vehicle I
had learned to control was indeed lost to me in the Church,
but the living spirit, the breathing creatures, the beating
hearts I had studied how to move, were the same; and
although suffering from a certain incoherency of mind and
excessive redundancy of language, I did not despair of suc-
cess in my new sphere. It seemed to me to be one full of
122 BETHNAL GEEEN AND WESTMINSTER.
great possibilities. I was more hopeful then, than I am
now about Church reform. I thought the clergy as a class
more intelligent. I thought more of the old theology could
be worked up into a new and living organism than I now see
to be possible. I was more hopeful about vital Christianity.
I believed in welding together classes on the basis of a
common and Christ-like humanity ; in raising and purifying
the working classes by the presentation, if not of a nobler,
at all events of a more practical ideal. As time went on,
I found the problem more complex and less soluble.
Then, I was more hopeful about my own powers. T
thought that steady industry and perseverance would supply
my natural defects of brain and fitfulness of temperament,
which were very considerable. Happy imperfection of
judgment ! happy inconsistency of thought ! How many
endea,vours after the Christian life would never have been
made did men stop to count the cost or estimate their own
weakness ! How many good works would never be begun
could the inevitable failures be foreseen ! Still the impulse
of youthful fervour and inexperience which endures as seeing
that which is invisible, is never wholly without fruit, and,
after all, seems closely akin to the faith that removes moun-
tains. I would not have had my life at the East End
without its illusions or its failures. The first have com-
forted and the last have humbled me, and both have
worked together for good by inspiring me to work for the
attainable.
FIRST LITERARY SUCCESSES. 123
When I had been nearly two years in the Church and
went west to St. James the Less, Westminster, as curate,
88. there was very little outward trace, of my
T Jf 8 * musical life left. One morning I was reminded
Lfl-TERAKY
SUCCESSES, that I was still a musician by a letter from the
De,an of Canterbury, DEAN ALFORD. He had just become
editor of the Contemporary Review. He sent me two volumes
of MOZART'S letters, and asked me for a page or two of notice.
With the exception of a little East End sketch called
" Amy Arnold/' for which I received the modest sum of
2 from a religious Society, this was the first remunerative
work that had come the way of my pen. I had got rather
disheartened about my writing. The provincial press printed
my prose lucubrations, and my poems were often accepted
never paid for. I can see now what shut me out of the
magazines. It was the superb magniloquence of my style.
" Words ! words ! words ! " they killed me. " Amy Arnold"
was a simple, unaffected little narrative, with a touch of
pathos stealing over the page like the evening sunlight that
fell through the dusty casement upon the bed of the dying
girl. That real sketch from life was accepted, and I had
begun to feel that until I had something to say it was of no
use to trifle with war-paint, or strut about in the borrowed
plumes of extravagant imagery and flimsy rhetoric.
So my pen, with the exception of sermon writing, which
I was even then fast abandoning in favour of the spoken
word, had lain tolerably idle, and when I opened MOZART'S
124 BETIINAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
letters with a beating heart, I resolved to wield what had
hitherto been but a goose-quill in sober earnest, and to
succeed. ^ That article, which is now to be found in the
Biographical Section of Music and Morals, at once " placed "
my literary faculty in the Dean's estimation. I may say it
made my literary fortune.
The sudden change from literary failure to success
surprised me a little, but the fact is my whole style had
suddenly changed. I still could be magniloquent
89 - when I chose, but I learned, partly from my
WBITIXG.
pulpit studies and the cultivation of the spoken
word, the value of directness and plain speaking, both as a
means of expressing thought and winning attention. I
began instinctively to choose the short instead of the long
words, and then I found that I could bring in the long
words and rolling sentences occasionally with all the more
crushing effect. Somebody pointed out to me that this
habitual temperance and occasional exuberance of language
was a leading feature of MILTON'S prose. This encouraged
me in chastening my style. I thought I might not be able
to imitate MILTON in any other way.
From that day I never have found any difficulty in
gaining admission to any magazine that I chose to write
for, from the Quarterly Review down to the veriest " penny
dreadful.'' The following week the Dean of Canterbury
sent me about twenty volumes of all sorts to review lor
HO WELL'S " VENETIAN LIFE." 125
the Contemporary. Amongst these was MR. HOWELL'S
Venetian Life.
MR. HOWELL was at that time an unknown writer.
It was my happiness to discern him at once on this side
90. of the big pond. I believe my review was the
H vEi 8 K first notice that he S ot in Engiand. I had
LIFE." no t read two pages of his book before I expe-
rienced the indescribable sensation of something new,
characteristic, and charming. Any man, be he painter,
poet, essayist, or musician, who can give us that feeling,
that distinct breath of novelty, that odour as of brine from
the great ocean and fount of creation, lifts himself at once
above the herd. He has the incommunicable touch that
cannot be taught ; the power of making the ever original and
personal soul shine through not as a reflection, a copy, a
parody a soul like any other soul, but the soul of the soul
in him, the writer unlike all the world with 'a message for
the soul of the soul in me, the reader, unlike every other
reader, discerned, appealed to, found out. That is the
precious and prophetic quality which stamps all best art and
literature. It comes from the Alone and goes to the Alone ;
it is the eternal open secret. " I visit the Royal Academy
every year," said ALMA TADEMA to me the other day, " and
seek for some picture which will give me a new sensation.
I can hardly ever find one. I seek in vain. Endless repe-
tition ! " This power of giving utterance to the new belongs
126 BETHNAL GREEN AND WESTMINSTER.
to all genius and places it. Musician s, as well as others,
get insensibly classed by this same strength of individuality,
which the whole of our modern life in this conventional
copy-book world conspires to stifle and stamp out.
BEETHOVEN, SPOHR, SCHUMANN, MENDELSSOHN, CHOPIN,
WAGNER each is new; does not try to be new like your char-
latans ; cannot help it ; does naturally, without effort, with-
out knowing it, what was inconceivable to all men the
moment before, what has not been done, could never have
been done earlier or by anyone else, or at any other time.
Then the school is founded and the aroma of novelty passes.
Manufacture sets in. Art gets itself machine-made. None
think it possible ever again to create or write or paint
otherwise. But Genius, that eternal child, comes by fling-
ing garlands wet with dew, and the scales fall once more
from our eyes, and lo ! a new heaven and a new earth stand
revealed, and the old things have passed away and all things
have become new, even as every day is new, born out of the
infinite sunlight to fade again into the " azure of the All,"
whilst "God fulfils Himself in many ways."
Under the Dean of Canterbury's editorial encouragement
I wrote essay after essay in rapid succession for the Con-
temporary Review, not always but frequently on
\) L*
MUSIC AND music. These articles, together with a few that
appeared in Good Words, formed the staple of
my first book, Music and Morals, which appeared ia
"MUSIC AND MORALS." 127
1871. They were in no sense written to order; several
of them had been in my mind for years. At Fresh-
water, Isle of Wight, during many a lonely ramble, I
grappled ineffectually with the problem of musical sound,
and the reason why it acted so directly and powerfully upon
the life of emotion. In Italy, at Florence, pacing the Cas-
cine by the Arno beneath a network of emerald foliage in
spring in my gondola on the shores of the Lido off Venice
in the southern vineyards at Naples, when all the grapes
were gathered and the trailing vines hung yellow and scarlet
in the fig gardens of Genoa, and amid the perfumed orange-
groves of the Riviera, all hung with golden fruit yet still
breathing with flowers, the same problem haunted me, when
at last it seemed to flash suddenly and satisfyingly upon me
that Sound was the sovereign art-vehicle of Emotion,
because it possessed itself all the properties of emotion, viz.,
elation, depression, velocity, &c. Everyone said, how simple !
Of course ; and yet I am not aware that it had occurred to
anyone to point this out before, though many have quietly
assumed it since.
These ideas, I say, had long been maturing in my mind,
and when I took up my pen in England I established this
position in the first part of my book with intense pleasure,
and I may say that the whole of Music and Morals was
written out of a full heart and brain, in which many thoughts
had been stored for years without ever having found a
congenial outlet in any literary form.
128 BETHNAL GEEEN AND WESTMINSTER.
I should in all probability not have thought of issuing,
in its present form, a companion volume of collected essays
92. ranging over about twelve years (1871-83), had
MrVcsicAL not var i us reprints in America, and translations
LIFE. i n t o French and German, warned me that others
were not slow to reap where I had strawn. In republishing
these pieces, however, I have decided to take the wind out of
the pirates' sails, as far as I could, by giving my work a sort
of autobiographical setting which none of the pirates could
possibly supply. I intend, then, to string my separate beads
upon the thread of my own life, in some places supplying
certain links of thought which may tend to give my essays
a unity of purpose and sustained interest, which they might
not otherwise possess.
NOTE. Anent my old friend VENUA; as this is passing
through the press there comes to me news that he died and
is buried at Cambridge. The inscription on his tombstone
runs thus :
Dieu lui fasse paix.
Monsieur
Jean Guillaume Kobert Rene' Venua,
An accomplished musician.
Born in Paris 1787.
Departed this life,
4th December 1868,
Aged 81.
"I know that my Redeemer liveth."
ooli.
BY THE GOLDEN SEA.
Stcontr ISooft.
BY THE GOLDEN SEA.
i.
INTERLUDE
ON RECURRENT IDEAS.
IREDERICK DENISON MAURICE once said, "People
sometimes tell me that I repeat myself they appa-
rently wish to hear something new every time they
come to my church, or read a new book of mine but,"
he added, " I never professed to teach or write
93.
A SENTENCE new things I never had but one or two things
[CE ' that I was anxious to say and I have been
saying them over and over again for thirty years/'
Everyone has not the courage to speak like this ; but all
teaching that is not merely heterogeneous and eclectic (a
9 *
132 INTERLUDE ON RECURRENT IDEAS.
sort of teaching, by the way, for which MAURICE had a
deep contempt) deals with a few master thoughts what
WAGNER would call " Leitmotiven." Evolution rules
DARWIN. An intense faith in the moral and Spiritual
Constitution of the world rules TENNYSON. A reverent
Pessimism pervades the works of GEORGE ELIOT, an equally
reverent Optimism characterises EMERSON. When the
ferment of creative and imaginative sensibility subsides, all
thoughtful minds have a tendency to settle into grooves
marked out by idiosyncrasy, temperament, quality of brain
tissue, heredity, and sometimes social environment.
No class of writers better illustrate this than historians.
HALLAM is impersonal; JOHN RICHARD GREEN, personal;
one will construe history, like BUCKLE, through
the colourless lens of inexorable and pitiless
MIND BIAS.
law, and see historical movements making men ;
another, like CARLYLE, will let the human element count
for much, and see men making historical movements; whilst
a third, like MACAULAY, will recognise the personal and
impersonal power in history, and warp both a little with
party politics.
Those who expect to take up My Musical Life and
find in it nothing but novelty, may be disappointed to light
upon more than once something which recalls Music and
Morals ; yet all I have ever aspired to is to " sing to one
clear harp in divers tones," the few clear and strong and
ROOT THOUGHTS. 133
sweet and happy things that have been revealed to me
through music.
My thoughts on music are recurrent thoughts. The same
beam of light rests upon many a ripple. But thoughts will
sometimes bear re-statement. When a thought is new it is
often a little confused, yet is there a certain force and
radiance in the very confusion. The haze of sunrise the
' ' wild freshness of morning " is at once the first and the
last memory that abides with us. The old man forgets
the crowded and dusty thoroughfares of middle life and
babbles of green fields.
The two thoughts which lie at the root of all my musical
as of all my religious thinking are: 1st. THE TREMENDOUS
EMPIRE OP THE SENSES, by which I mean the
ROOT spell of the beautiful world without us, its colour,
light, loveliness, its gracious, radiant, and tender
women; its happy innocent children; its generous, inge-
nious, and indomitable men; its tragedies and comedies;
"all the wealth and all the woe"; its hints of an im-
perishable universe, ' unseen though felt, overshadowing us ' ;
its silent finger pointing to the sky; all this I view with
' reverence and good heed,' and without satiety. Life to me
is from quite an external point of view, with all its sin
and sorrow, infinitely worth living.
. .
Never to lose the eager spirit ; to keep the heart eternally
134 INTERLUDE ON RECURRENT IDEAS.
young ; to stand always at the open gates of Paradise ; to
listen to 'the lordly music flowing from the illimitable
years ! ' This is my desire. But 'tis a world of time, and
of things seen and temporal, after all altiora peto.
So that other thought is never long absent. THE IM-
MENSE SUPREMACY OP THE SOUL ! In darkness and tears,
in pain and loss, in the failure of hope, in the shame of
remorse, when all things in heaven and earth seem unstable
I am aware of a secret life, a consciousness independent
of time and chance. This revives my spirit; this soothes
me with a sense of the infinite.
Alone, with closed eyes, the royal visions pass. Angelic
faces are with me in the twilight, voices that cannot be
heard, touches that cannot be felt, and suddenly a summer
land within breaks forth when all is dark without. I per-
ceive that man does not live by bread alone. The outer
world is the dream, the inner life is the reality. I carry
it everywhere with me. I thought the visible universe was
all in all. I perceive it to be as nothing in comparison with
the soul that sits enthroned above it. It is that which
makes the poor man royal and beggars the king. What
wealth have you within, not what will men and women give
you ; what, not where, are you. Does not each one carry
within himself the riches and the poverty of a world ? and
is there not a life within a life? This is THE SOLITARY
SUPREMACY OF THE SOUL.
A RETROSPECT. 135
Musical sound fascinated me early as the refined
physical medium on the very border-land of spirit, which,
when directly excited, dealt with and controlled the springs
of this mysterious inner life of feeling this region of
emotion which gives the spirit its solitary supremacy, and
colours or discolours at will all the objects of sense. The
Editor of the Quarterly Review invited me to explain my
views upon the subject. I repeated in a succinct
A form what I had said in my book, Music and
' Morals. The London Institution asked me to
lecture on the same subject. I had by this time com-
pletely possessed my thought and I became aware of my
increased facility in handling it. With the aid of a piece
of chalk and a black-board I there attempted to convey
to a mixed audience what at one time I should have
despaired of expressing without the aid of musical sound
or elaborate diagrams. The Quarterly article (vol. 131,
No. xxxvi) I do not intend to reprint; but the words I
spoke at Finsbury Circus, although going over some ground
familiar to the readers of my first volume, seem to me to
resume briefly my Kecurrent Thoughts on the Rationale
of Music, and its place amongst the Arts, and will, I think,
be found acceptable as an introduction to the meditations
contained in Book II. of this volume.
136 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
II.
THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
To discuss music without the aid of instruments, notes, or
diagrams, is not an easy and would be an impossible thing,
were I mainly dealing with its science, history,
y /
THE ETERNAL or performance. But it is with the general
philosophy and rationale of the art that I am
now concerned. Music has come in for its full share of
science, history, and criticism ; but how few have dived into
its essence, and instead of seeking for the inevitable " how,"
asked after the eternal " why " !
I have always held that music should be discussed and
written about just like any other art. The musical criticisms
of the day deal chiefly in technicality and per-
Jo.
HOW TO MS- sonality, and it is rather unfortunate that the few
CUSS MUSIC. .. i -ii L a.
writers who occasionally venture out into tne
deep, and discourse on music per se, are deficient in the
one thing needful " musical perception " ; in that ocean
they cannot swim, and the sooner some of them get to shore
the better. Music has its Morals, its right and its wrong,
its high and its low, like any other art ; and until people
can be got to understand how this can be, and why it must
be, music will never assert its dignity among the arts and
receive its dues. Before MR. RUSKIN wrote, people thought
HOUGH ELEMENTS OF SOUND. 137
that there was no right or wrong about painting, sculpture,
and architecture, and musical criticism has been in the
same Slough of Despond. And what is the consequence?
Painting and sculpture rank above music, yet music, not
painting, not sculpture, is the modern art. Who shall be
found to do for the new art of music what MR. RUSKIN has
done for painting and architecture to create for it a moral
philosophy as well as a rationale ? I need not say that in
Music and Morals I have tried to show how this might
be done, and I have been much gratified to observe that
writers who are apt to treat my opinions as common, when
not wrong, and as wrong when not common, have not
always been deterred from the not uncommon practice of
appropriating them without acknowledgment.
I now glance briefly : I. At the development of music
out of the rough elements of sound.
II. At its place amongst the sister arts and its peculiar
functions.
III. At the obvious nature of its influence.
Music, its origin, function, and influence that is my
subject.
We now enter at once into the world of mystery and
99. imagination : of mystery because, though you
EODGH k now how a sound can be produced, you do not
ELEMENTS
OF SOUND, know why it produces its effect on you; of
imagination, since I must ask you to recall as you read, by
138 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
way of illustration, the most beautiful sounds you have ever
heard. But sounds of less agreeable nature have first to be
realised. Before we enter the temple of music or penetrate
its inner shrine, we find ourselves distracted with the rough
elements of sound, the rabble of noise outside how out or
such elements shall we ever collect the " choirs that chime
after the chiming of the eternal spheres " ?
We have Sound in the world around us of every con-
ceivable kind. Listen to the distant roar of a great populous
city. Its cry goes up by day and night. Myriad voices
ascend from sea and land. If you notice the waves as
they drag down the shingles on the beach, in their retiring
scream they give forth a series of semitones ; and there is a
rough and elemental sort of musical sound in the moaning
of the wind, which has supplied poets with allusions more
sentimental than accurate ; still the wind's harp does go up
arid down, like the mooing of a cow. And doubtless the
rough inflexions of the human voice existed long before
music became an art. As the voice rises and falls you have
a scale of emotional inflexion which gives it full force ; for
it is the sound quite as much as the words used which yields
the impression of what is passing in your mind. But even
hero we have not arrived at musical sound, we have only
touched some materials of it. How shall we get at musical
sound ? Or, in other words, what is the difference between
a Noise and a musical Note ? A noise is only understood
when the nature of a musical note is understood. Roughly
NOISE. 139
speaking, a musical note means a "clang," to use HELM-
HOLTZ'S word, in which there is one fundamental tone, and
along with it the third, fifth, and octave as buried tones.
When the fundamental is strong, and the hidden tones, the
third, fifth, and octave, &c., very faint, you get the impression
of one musical note which is invariably the fundamental
tone. There are many hidden mysteries in a fundamental
tone, a greater or less variety of overtones, varying accord-
ing to your sound-quality. I have had occasion to dwell
more scientifically upon this in my chapter on " Bells."
Now, what makes noise as opposed to a musical note
is just this. You get the third, fifth, and the octave, or
some other overtones, louder than the funda-
mental note. To illustrate this summarily, we
NOISE.
might compare the notes of a violin or a
fine bell with a Chinese gong; or you may strike a
coal-scuttle, or a warming-pan, and produce an equally
satisfactory result. A gong is, however, perhaps the best
type of noise I do not allude to those smooth Japanese
metal plates, or bars, which often give one or more
very sweet tones, but those horrible gongs, dented all
over, that you thump with a drum-stick, beginning pp.
and ending with a purgatorial crescendo in ff. This, I
say, is noise, and most of the sounds which fall upon the
ear are noise, especially what we hear " whene'er we take
our walks abroad '' in the streets of London.
140 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
"When, then, we have found a clear fundamental tone,
with its accompanying fainter overtones, we have found a
musical note. Now analyze this musical note.
101.
MUSICAL It can vary in three ways, and in three ways
only. When you know how it so varies you
know all that can be known about it. A musical note,
then, can vary in pitch, in intensity, and in quality or
timbre.
1. What makes the pitch of a note? It depends upon
the rapidity of the vibrations. Supposing you take as an
illustration the sound given by a note of an harmonium,
which is caused by the vibration of a metal tongue. When
this tongue vibrates slowly, or only a few times backwards
and forwards in a second, you get a note of a deep pitch ;
but when it vibrates at the rate of 67,000 vibrations to the
note, the pitch is so shrill that although some cats may
hear it, no human beings can. The ear of the cat is finer
than ours. Cats and some birds are microphones compared
to man; they see sights we cannot see, they smell smells
we very fortunately cannot smell, and they hear sounds
which we cannot hear. A note is high or low in pitch,
according as the number of vibrations which produce it
are in a given time few or many, fast or slow.
2. What makes its intensity? It is the length of the
vibration waves that determines their loudness or intensity.
If the wave or the extent of " excursion " of the vibrating
molecules be large, the shape of the wave being the same
BIRTH OF MUSIC. 141
the sound is loud; if the reverse, the shape being the
same, the sound is faint.
3. What determines the quality ? The quality depends on
the mode of vibration. It is, as HELMHOLTZ has shown, the
number, order, and intensity of the vibrations of the over-
tones in a "clang"' which determines timbre or quality,
and which makes the differences between the same note
sounded on a violin, piano, harp, flute, &c.
But even now we have only arrived at the composition of
musical notes, not at the composition of music. How then
did music arise ? Of course the human ear has
102.
BIRTH OP always been open to sweet and disagreeable
sounds, and has gradually been led to choose
between them. I do not want to quarrel with the mythical
notion that some pristine man or woman, wandering on the
sea-shore, may have found a shell with seaweed stretched
like strings across it, out of which the wind was making
an ^Eolian harp, and that so the first idea of the harp may
have arisen. This may have happened, for aught we know.
The creating of artificial notes for mere pleasure seems to
have been a custom from time immemorial.
Bones of extinct mammals have been found made into
flutes. At least M. Lartet says so. What he found looked
like a flute to him, and far be it from me to bring art into
collision with science by saying it does not look like a
flute. I think, on the whole, it does ; and, if so, this may
142 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
be another proof that primitive man delighted in sweet
sounds. But we are still far from the art of music. Here
are witnesses to an ancient impulse in the direction of an
art, but not the art itself.
We may as well skip Egypt and Assyria, and assume that
the musical survival of the fittest remained, after the ex-
tinction of those empires, with Greece. However, we need
not pause long even in Greece ; for, although the Greeks
had many modes or scales, as they never discovered the
natural advantages of the octave completed by the eighth
note, their musical art could not progress.
It is useless for pedants to prose about the emotional
advantages and special musical character of the Dorian,
Lydian, or Phrygian modes as if we had lost, or could
lose, anything by adopting our system of fixed tonality;
for once get that and you can obviously write in any mode,
and give your key any special character you like ; and the
proof of this is that BERLIOZ has used the proud Hypodorian
mode in the second part of " Christ's Infancy " Saint-Saens
opens the " Noces de Promethee " with it. GOUNOD uses
it in Faust for the "Roi de Thule." The Hypophrygian
mode colours the close of William Tell, act ii. (RossiNi) ;
and we might multiply instances but the Greeks could
never have written Faust or William Tell, as will presently
appear.
The fact is, that in Greece musical sound was auxiliary
to the exercise of the dance, the ceremony of the feast, the
BIRTH OF MUSIC. 143
discipline of the arena, or the voice of the orator ; it
accompanied chanting, and most people are agreed that
harmony, in our sense of the word, was at that time un-
known. The Greek system, like some others in the realms of
theology, philosophy, and science, was elaborate but sterile,
and so Greece handed her traditions on to Rome, and still no
progress was made, because music, like all other arts, had
to bide her time. Her Muse is essentially the dear posses-
sion of the modern world ; she lives and moves and finds
free development and expansion in our atmosphere alone;
and this is what makes her so absorbing and fascinating,
and entitles her, now that she has reached her glorious
maturity, to rank above the other arts. I say that Music
is essentially the Modern Art, although her mystic treasures
lay buried for centuries in the womb of Time.
So all things have their supreme moment ; so electricity
slept in the amber, and was known to the Greek six hundred
years before Christ, but was only wedded to applied science
in the laboratory of the nineteenth century. Every ancient
who boiled a kettle must have observed the rush of steam
from its spout, but it remained for Watt and Stephenson to
adapt it to commerce, manufacture, and transport. And
all arts have fared the same. Like spirits in the vasty deep,
they wait for their special call. That call is always the
same. It is the deep need of an Age.
What need haa human life of art ? What is art ? Art
144 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
is, like Sensation, one and indivisible in its essence ; but,
103. like Sensation, it is manifold in its channels of
KXPKESSION expression. It captures in different forms and
THE IMPEEA- r
TIVB MOOD. runs through the five senses. Expression is the
imperative mood of our nature : without it we wither and
pine; with it we grow, we develop, we soar. Man is
essentially a dramatic animal : he is ever seeking to make
known what is in him; he aspires to the true possession
of himself. Life becomes more rich when it passes into
word and action. Every moment in proportion as we are
truly alive we are longing to manifest ourselves as we
can. We are not satisfied till someone else enjoys what
we enjoy, knows what we know, feels what we feel, and
the great burden-lifters of humanity are those who have
told us the things we knew already, but which we could
not express for ourselves. These are " the souls that
have made our souls wiser.'* These are the prophets and
the poets and the artists, dear, kindred, world-embracing
spirits that give humanity back to itself, and make it doubly
worth having by bestowing upon it those memorable and
entrancing gifts of expression that " on the stretched fore-
finger of Time sparkle for ever."
\
And do you not feel this as you stand before any great
work of art the "Madonna di San Sisto." at
104.
ART RELIEVES Dresden, the " Transfiguration " at Rome ? Do
you not feel (< Here is one who has painted my
THE DAY AND THE HOUR. 145
inexpressible thoughts here before me are the Divine figures
I have seen in my dreams"? When you hear the Elijah
do you not stand in the cleft of the rock with the prophet,
and veil your face as the whirlwind sweeps by, and amid the
crash of the thunder and rending of the rocks, you perceive
that the Lord is not in the tempest, nor in the earthquake,
nor in the fire, but at last in the still small voice ? And
upon you has not this had a great and hallowing effect ?
Has not music taken your own turbulent emotions, and
expressed them for you in the storm, leaving you sublimely
elevated and yet sublimely calm at the close? Such will
indeed appear to be the special function of musical art.
But I must not anticipate.
I said each art has to bide its time. When a man
appears before his time he has to stand down, and another
takes up his message later on. And so it is
.LUiX
THE DAY AND with art. There is affinity between an Age and
TUB 1IOUR. A , i . ' -t f ., ,.
an Art; let music come up before its time,
another art, Sculpture, will elbow it out, and each growth
will be rapid in due season, like that of seeds. Sculpture,
Architecture, Painting, Music, all follow the same law.
Look at sculpture in Greece from AGELADES and PHIDIAS
to PRAXITELES and LYSIPPUS, a brief one hundred and fifty
years the art reached its culmination, then dropped, like a
flower shedding its petals, throughout the Isles of Greece.
It was the same with the Greek drama, with Gothic Architec-
10
146 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
ture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with Italian
painting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; and Music,
from HA.VDEL to WAGXER, is following a similar course ;
for I think the future history of Music must be in its
combination with the other arts, and its adaptation in higher
complexity to the ever-restless needs of human emotion.
Now observe the grand fundamental law of art succession.
Each art comes as the angelic response to some cry of deep
106. developmental need, and it embodies the ideal
RISE > tendencies of a whole epoch. Thus, Sculpture
PROGRESS,
AKD DECAY. was the art of the Greeks because they knew
nothing higher than the beauty and symmetry of the human
body; that was the climax of their adoring souls, and it
came forth in the beautiful, graceful, and sublime forms
of Venus, Apollo, and Jove. We pass over Roman art,
for that was either done by Greeks in Rome or was simply
a pale, too often a mechanical, development of Greek art.
"VVe also pass over the early Christian art, for the early
Christians looked askance at art, and yet were subdued by
it, for they were forced at last to weave the heathen sym-
bols legends of Maia and Orpheus into their sepulchral
frescoes. We come later on to the extinction of almost all
sensibility in art, through Byzantine forms in fact, to the
year 814, the time of CHARLEMAGNE a time when the people
of Europe were so busily engaged in slaughtering one
another that, of course, there was little to be expected in the
RISE, PROGRESS, AND DECAY. 147
way of art, which requires for its elaboration a certain
amount of peace and leisure.
But the great human needs are ever silently developing,
and by-and-by another art arose, that of Gothic Architecture.
This became a grand medium for expressing the new thoughts
and feelings of the people, the awe, the worship, the grandeur,
and, above all, the human interests of the new Christianity
now spreading rapidly, like some fertile and invincible
creeper, over the ruined fragments of the prostrate Roman
columns the foundation-stones of the modern world. MR.
RUSKIN has told us how the old monks built their very
lives, and along with them the hearts of the people, into
those noble cathedrals which are dotted over all Christian
lands, and remain the pride and boast of the civilized world,
lie has made us feel how the recluse must have revelled in
his cell as he gazed upon the stone which he was ready to
carve, or intrust to the itinerant mason ; how he paced his
cloister and dreamed of the execution of those ideas which
he had perhaps long cherished, until by degrees his imagi-
nation moulded the very life of the period, its activity, its
coarseness, its humour, as well as its devotion, into sculptured
capital and gargoyle.
The efflorescent and flamboyant wildness of design marked
at length the extreme limits of the stone art. The too fitful,
fanciful impatience or despair succeeded loss of healthy per-
ception, loss of interest, of reason, of law, and Gothic archi-
tecture became worse than dead degraded. But the stone
10 *
148 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
art only fell when its powers as an expressional medium were
exhausted.
Art now turned the stonemason's chisel into the painter's
brush ; rapidly through the schools of Venice, Florence, and
Rome, were the foundations of the art laid, the discovery of
perspective, anatomy, and colour. The noble edifice rose
from GIOTTO to RAPHAEL only to exhaust in its turn, and in a
comparatively short time, the new, more plastic, more
pathetic vehicle of colour, and turn restlessly to seek and to
find another medium.
What was that other latest-born minister of expression,
eager to seize the torch as it fell from the painter's trem-
bling hands. It was Music. She offered herself
107.
MUSIC a new emotional medium fitted to express what
' neither Sculpture, Architecture, nor Painting
could express, the mystic and complex emotions of that
hidden life made up of self-analysis, sensibility, love,
prayer, trance, vision, ecstasy, which Christianity brought
into the world, and which gave to the human soul that
inner and intense quality of spiritual independence which
must henceforth stamp and qualify all human progress.
It is impossible to deny that more secular elements entered
into the formation of the modern spirit, although its inward-
ness was its chief characteristic.
Great geographical discoveries, New Worlds, Australia
America, and the remote East ; great commercial activities,
SECRET OF MUSIC. 149
great inventions, the printing press, steam navigation, and
the electric telegraph; great religious movements, great revo-
lutions, the rise of the English Reformation, the translation
of the Bible ; many things combined to produce the unparal-
leled activity of the modern spirit. But amongst all these
factors Christianity was paramount ; it explored and sifted
emotion as it had never been explored and sifted before ; it
set free the springs of the inner life, and taught men the
sublime secret of an independent emotional consciousness,
before which the outer world vanished into space, whilst the
changes, the rise and fall, and subtle sequences of mental
states became the only realities.
But the hunger of art could not long be evaded. These
very states called aloud for expression ; they were elaborated
in the silence of the cloister, and it was thence
108.
SECRET OF that music stept forth into the world, as the new
art medium. Now, as I have elsewhere pointed
out at some length, music possesses two qualities combined
by no other art : first, the quality of velocity it moves ;
and secondly, the quality of direct appeal it stirs feelings
without having recourse to ideas or images. The drama,
indeed, has movement, but it only stirs emotion through
ideas; painting stirs us by the ideas presented and the
direct emotional impact of colour, but it has no velocity ;
that has to be supplied by imagination. You may ally
music with anything you please, but it alone can deal
150 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
first-hand with emotion, arouse it, control it, direct it,
and follow its chameleon life through all its innumerable
windings.
This, the secret of music, once stated, is stated for ever; it
is revealed in two words, Directness and Velocity.
And now, having shown the place of music amongst the
arts, I should naturally proceed to trace the history of
109. Modern Music through what MR. HULLAH has
P ^DERN >F terme< i i ts three periods. "We must be satisfied
MCSIC. h ere w ith but one glimpse. First period, A.D.
370 to 1400. AMBROSE (374) selected certain of the Greek
modes for chants. GREGORY (590) revived the forgotten
work of the good Milanese bishop, and added four new
scales. Then came HUCHBALD of Tournay (932), who intro-
duced a sort of harmony which must have resembled the
mixture stop of the organ. GUIDO (1020) of Arezzo, and
FRANCO of Cologne (1200), who between them divide the
honours of descant, cantus mensurabilis, or division into bars,
and flats and sharps, together with the invention of the
monochord.
In the second period, 1400 to 1600, we have JOSQUIN DES
PRES in Belgium, and PALESTRINA in Italy, and the rise of a
true system of tonality ; and when we enter the third period,
1600 to 1750, we have reached the true octave; the major
and minor scale in which we find the uniform arrangement
of semitones and the perfect cadence, ascribed by some to
MUSIC AND EMOTION. 151
MONTE VERDE 1590. When this moment arrived, the basis
of a sound musical development was reached, and modern
music then first became possible. The science of the cloister
had at last stepped forth to wed, to train and discipline the
wild, untutored art of the world outside.
Rapid and sudden, like the burst of Greek sculpture or
Italian painting, was the rise and progress of modern music,
the instant the science of the Church touched the heart of
the World.
CARISSIMI died 1672 ; he was the type of the transition
period. He might have seen PALESTRINA, and he lived to
hear CORELLI. In CORELLI'S life-time the germ of every
style of music since known arose. He witnessed the singing
schools of Naples in the south, the rise of the great violin
schools in the north, the foundation of the oratorio in Rome,
the progress of instrumental music throughout Italy,
France, and England. All this took place in the last cen-
tury, and we are struck with a certain awe when we remem-
ber that men are still (1883) alive who may have listened to
MOZART (died 1791), and conversed with the venerable HAYDN
(died 1808). (See Music and Morals.)
I return from this by no means irrelevant digression to
illustrate the functions by completing the analysis
MUSIC AND of music, as the direct language of the emotions.
Have you ever analysed your thoughts and feel-
ings? Some say it is an unhealthy practice, but that quite
152 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
depends; and if it is used for a legitimate purpose, it is
interesting to observe what is going on in the realm of
emotion. Every moment is occupied by some feeling
good, bad, or indifferent. You are very seldom neutral, and
when you are, it is worthy of being noted as a fixed point
from which to measure the " excursional " extent of your
emotion.
If I now repeat my analysis of the properties of emotion,
and then refer it to those of sound, as manipulated by music,
we shall find that precisely the same qualities which exist
inwardly in emotion, exist outwardly in sound. And that
is the reason why music is fitted to be, and is recognised
as, the language of emotion. I pointed this out in Music
and Morals, and when it was pointed out it seemed very
simple.
Emotion, then, consists first of elation and depression ;
that is, it goes up and down like a wavy line. When
a lecturer addresses an audience, the interest
KEW may go down lower and lower ; then, perhaps,
' he says something which tickles the fancy, and
the emotion goes up and up, his hearers' hopes are raised,
and they say to themselves, " Oh, it 's not going to be so
dull, after all." Here, then, is an instance of depression
followed by elation.
The next quality is intensity. Your emotion varies in
intensity. You grow intense and earnest as you listen
NEW ILLUSTRATIONS. 153
to a speaker who interests you, until perhaps you are
quite, as you say, carried away, or entranced by his
eloquence.
Then your emotion has variety. "We may illustrate this.
A man is sitting on a foggy day in his parlour, when
a friend suddenly drops in. He is glad to see him, and out
of depression he begins to rise into elation. And then
comes a story of the hunting field, a well-known wall had to
be cleared, and someone was thrown ; and as he listens with
more and more interest, he finds the climax to be that the
narrator himself was the man who was thrown, and that
he has come on this depressing day to see him partly on
that account. Then other friends drop in, and you ring for
cigars and wine. You are informed there are no cigars,
and your emotion is now divided by the story, the cigars, the
servant, and your friends ; you are the subject of a great
variety of simultaneous emotions, some not over-pleasurable,
but, at any rate, there is variety.
Then, fourthly, emotion has a kind of form you may
give it an arbitrary form ; you can represent its direction
by lines curved according to elation or depression, thick or
thin according to intensity, and you can bracket them
together to show that they are simultaneous. (Vide Music
and Morals.)
Lastly, emotion possesses velocity ; it travels, and it is
never quite at rest ; you may call its velocity x.
Now pass to musical sound. The notes in a musical scale
154 THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
go up and down; they have elation and depression, may
vary in loudness from pp. to ff. t from crescendo to
diminuendo, and so they have intensities. Many lines of
melody and harmony can be carried on simultaneously,
as in a part song or a score of Wagner's ; there is then
no mistake about variety. Then music has form. Musical
form is as much a recognised musical phrase as " nicely-
felt colour" is in painting, and it is more to the point,
for we have but to cast our eyes over a score of SPOHR
or BEETHOVEN, and compare it with one of HANDEL'S, to
see how widely different is the general form even to the
eye. Lastly, from adagio to presto you have reached in
music that crowning property of emotion, velocity, for
music is never at rest.
Side by side, then, we place, after five-fold analysis,
emotion and music, the thing to be expressed and the
thing which expresses it. In passing from one to the
other we have simply exchanged certain arbitrary lines
and an x for a set of symbols capable of bringing the
various properties of emotion into connection with sound.
That set of symbols, so long in arriving, so glorious in
its advent, is obviously modern Musical Notation, and in
wedding that to sound we have reached at last the sove-
reign and direct medium of emotional expression in THE
ART OF MODERN MUSIC.
And now if it be asked, " What is the use of music ? "
USE
OF MUSIC. 155
I may ask in return, ""What is the use of emotion?"
It colours all life, it inspires all words, it nerves
112.
uss OF for all action. What would your life be without
it ? And what is the grandest thought without
it ? You know you may repeat a grand passage of SHAKE-
SPEARE without emotion. The noblest passages in the Bible
are often read aloud without kindling a thrill or quickening
a pulse. But apply the heat of noble dramatic action or
impassioned religious eloquence, and how changed is the
leaden atmosphere ! how living and pregnant is the thought !
Music expresses no thoughts, stands for no ideas or intellec-
tual conceptions, rouses (except by association) no images ;
but it stands for independent states of consciousness, it
creates the atmosphere in which thoughts are born, it deals
with the mystic states in which thought is steeped and
coloured.
"Without emotion thought would perish, or remain passive
and inert. No age, no sentient creature has been quite
without a sense of musical sound as the language of emotion.
In its rude elements even dumb animals are affected by it.
It influences dogs, horses, and cattle generally. Notice how
a musical sound, though monotonous, is understood and
obeyed, and how the jingle of bells notoriously encourages
horses to perform their work. The plough-boy is inspirited
by the strains of his own whistling. And do you wonder
that the Spartans were enabled to march to victory inspired
by the lays of the minstrel TYRT^US that our soldiers
156 THE RATIONALE OP MUSIO.
require the fife and drum? And I have been told a thing
at which I have much wondered, that there are people in
the North who are very delighted and cheered by that
monotonous instrument of torture, the Scotch bagpipe.
I must not trust myself to dwell upon the religious func-
tions of music active, as in the Lutheran hymn, sung by
the people; passive, as in the mass or Catholic
llo.
SONGS OF anthem, sung for the people. The songs of the
' temple have had more attention paid them than
the songs of the street ; but the time will come when these,
too, will be understood as important factors in the life and
morality of the people.
A great statesman has said, " Let me make the songs of
the people, and let who will make their laws." And when
we think what might be the influence of music
114.
SONGS OP we cannot but regret that the popular songs of
England are, in fact, represented by " Tommy,
make room for your uncle." The songs of our music
halls kindle emotions truly, but of what kind are they ?
When you employ music, wed it to thought, and thus
awaken emotions, you must remember you are playing
with two-edged tools, for the emotions kindled and directed
may be such as it is unhealthy and 'mischievous to cherish.
Emotion means fire, and a heap of live coals on your
carpet and in your grate subserve very different purposes ;
MUSIC MEANS MORALS. 157
for in the one case your house is warmed, and in the
other case it is burned clown. So it is with music, which
kindles and directs emotion. Music under certain conditions
elevates, while under certain other conditions it demoralises.
Music ought to be used discreetly, advisedly, and soberly,
and that is why the particular kind of music we adopt, and
the words to which music is set, should be very carefully
considered.
Music is not intended simply to tickle the ear; music
means Morals. And here let me remind you that not
half enough has been said of the discipline of
115.
MUSIC MEANS emotion, a function exercised in the highest
degree by music. Upon this very quality of
discipline, nobility, and truth of emotional expression,
turns the distinction between the modern German and
the modern Italian schools, as schools. I say modern
Italian, because the old Church schools of Pergolese and
Stradella were severe, beautiful, and! sublime compared to
the modern Italian opera and romance. Yet must we not
deny the splendid melodic and even harmonic qualities which
are to be found in the essentially false form and spirit of
the Italian opera. It has been too much the fashion
of the English Wagnerites to decry Italian music ; but the
German Wagnerite is more liberal and catholic in his ap-
preciation, while WAGNER himself was the most liberal and
truly catholic musician of them all. He could appreciate
158 THE RATIONALE Of MUSIC.
every kind of music, and so caa those who interpret him
best.
I remember, when I was at Nuremberg, falling in with
RICHTER, then conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. We were
seated in the parlour of a little old-fashioned
116.
BICHTEB ON German inn, discussing the various schools of
music, when I happened to allude to a famous
quartet in VERDI'S Rigoletto, and to BELLINI'S Norma,
whereupon RICHTER, the great Wagner disciple RICHTER,
the conductor of the Bayreuth Festival, the incarnation
of the music of the future, sprang up, and lifting high
his glass, in honour of the great Italian, exclaimed,
" Ach, der Bellini ist ein ganz colossaler Kerl ! "
To resume. The secret of a good school of music is,
that it is a real exponent and a sound discipliner of the
emotions. Listening to a symphony or sonata
REFINING of BEETHOVEN'S is not a joke : it is a study,
an emotional training. You sit down and listen
attentively, and the master leads you through various
moods; he elates you and depresses you; your feeling
waxes and wanes with various intensities, not spasmodi-
cally, but by coherent sequences. You are put through
a whole system of feeling, not of your own choosing; you
are not allowed to choose, you are to control yourself here
and expand there ; and at last, after due exercise, you are
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL OF MUSIC. 159
landed on the composer's own platform, disciplined, re-
freshed, and elevated. Although urged here and there, the
light rein has been upon you, and the master drives you
much in the same- way that a skilled charioteer drives a
spirited steed.
This is the process of all really great music, and the
reason why the Italian, as a school, and, indeed, all bad
music, Italian or otherwise, is injurious is because it deals
unfairly or untruly with your emotions. It does not give
you a balanced, rational, or healthful sequence of feeling.
It is like a picture the effect of which is spoilt by a washy
background of raw colour, or like a melodrama such as The
Bells, which, without any reflection on MR. IRVING' s fine
acting, we may, however, call a very good melodrama, but of
a bad art sort. It is unlike a play of SHAKESPEARE'S. If he
has horrors to bring before you, he prepares you for them ;
you are not trifled with and exhausted, your emotions are
not whipped and spurred until they almost cease to respond.
All bad art trifles with, exhausts, and enervates you ; and
music most of all, because it deals at first hand with the
emotions.
I look for a great popular development of musical art in
118. England. You know very well that " the English
AN ENGLISH are no a jnugjcai people." They may cultivate
SCHOOL OF J J
MUSIC, music, they like it and pay for it, but they do
iiot produce anything to be compared with the works of the
1GO THE RATIONALE OF MUSIC.
great masters on the Continent. The national music is ahout
"Champagne Charley/' "Tommy," "Waking the Baby,"
"Grandfather's Clock," and "Over the Garden Wall."
It is true we have SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN, whose composi-
tions are always welcome ; but he studied in Germany, he
took the Mendelssohn scholarship at Leipsic, and therefore
he may be considered, so far as music is concerned, a Ger-
man to the backbone ; it can scarcely be said of him, from
a musical point of view, that, " in spite of all temptations
to belong to other nations, he remained an Englishman."
But in the last forty years the progress of music in
England has been very great. MR. HULLAH told me that
when he began to examine schools he found children who
could not sing two or three consecutive notes in tune ; but
that now, very greatly through MR. HULLAH'S own work,
this state of things is altered, and he says that if you go
through the length and breadth of the land, you will find
that the national ear has been to a great extent cultivated.
But we must not stop here; the national art must be
improved, and then the national taste, and, above all, the
education of the nation, as a whole, in music.
I should like to see someone who should be responsible
119. for conducting the musical performances of our
BOARD children. Nothing is more striking in our Board
MUSIC. Schools than the admirable management of
every othq* department of instruction, and the muddle,
EOAED SCHOOL MUSIC. Ifil
looseness, uncertainty, and general inefficiency of tlic
musical instruction. Sound, popular music, songs, and
part singing, at sight as well as by ear, should radiate
from the Board Schools. I desire to see cheap sheets
of music placed in the hands of the children, which they
may take to their homes, and so learn the art of singing
part songs, as they do in Amsterdam, and, indeed, in
Holland generally. Even in Switzerland there is a certain
coherent musical part " yodelling/' at ajiy rate superior to
the " He 'a a jolly good fellow " style of chorus affected at
our own convivial assemblies.
Let the heaven-born art of music spread ; let it bless the
homes and hearths of the people ; let the children sing, and
sing together ; let the concertina, the violin, or the flute be
found in every cottage ; let not the only fiddle in the place
be hung up in the beer-shop, the only choruses in the village
be heard in the choir and at the public-house. And while
music refines pleasure, let it stimulate work. Let part
songs and sweet melody rise in all our crowded factories
above the whirl of wheels and clanking of machinery ; thus
let the factory girl forget her toil and the artisan his grie-
vance, and Music, the Civiliser, the Recreator, the Soother
and Purifier of the emotions, shall become the music of the
future for England.
11
162
in.
INTERLUDE
ON SENSE CHANNELS.
THE soul is one, simple, indivisible. The senses are five,
through these the* inward and spiritual converses with the
outward and visible. In some higher state,
120.
UNITY OF GOETHE imagined we might perceive, without
having recourse to these five ministers ; to be
in each other's presence might suffice to place souls in
perfect and intimate communion, without speech, or touch,
or sight, or sound. When dealing with one sense, I am
aware of limitation and imperfection ; it gives me what
it can of perception and no more. I must eke out its
message by another to complete sight I must resort to
touch ; but I soon find 'tis but half a world without sound.
Insatiable is the soul until perception flows in through all
the senses. WAGNER felt this when he insisted upon the
arts being united, thus instructing the soul fully, by a
simultaneous appeal, in which that which could not be
conveyed by one channel came in through another.
Something of this kind I happened to say in a sermon
one night, and the next day I received an anonymous MS.
THE HUMAN EAR. 163
in which the sense of hearing was discussed in several de-
sultory paragraphs, full of ingenuity and, I must
AN ANONY- add, of technical knowledge. The anonymous
author will, perhaps, pardon me for making use
of his ideas here. These remarks interested me for several
reasons : first, because they were thoughtful and suggestive ;
secondly, because they teemed with accurate information ;
thirdly, because the argument from design, now habitually
set aside, is unexpectedly endorsed from a scientific plat-
form ; and lastly, because the description of the ear from
a musical standpoint very fitly led up to the meditations
which I am about to offer to my reader on hearing music.
My unknown correspondent began by pointing out that
the human ear was the most perfect conceivable mechanism
for the reception and transmission of musical
122. r
THE HDMAN sounds. He added, on what authority I know
not, that as regards structural aggregation of
elements, this has been so since the creation of the world ;
no alterations under the influences of time are supposed to
have occurred. The progressive evolution of music has not
been accompanied by any synchronous changes in the
acoustic apparatus of the human ear. Yet in the human ear
we find provisions for the differentiation of noises and
musical notes, from the canon's crash to the one sixty-fourth
of a musical tone the former (probably) in the labyrinth,
the latter in the fibres of Corti, (33|- to each semitone). We
11 *
164 INTERLUDE ON SENSE CHANNELS.
have sympathetically vibrating membranes and strings
of varying tension, capable of answering to an almost
infinite variety of fundamental tones, discriminating their
pitch ; we even have dampers, to arrest vibrations.
Again, in the human ear we have had from all time a tele-
phonic membrane (the tympanum) capable of transmitting
4,000 vibrations a second to the central electro-magnetic
medium (or brain) of the human telegraphic system of nerves
and branch offices, in which the sensations arising from the
perception of sound are generated and reflected.
As in the case of colour and the differentiation of various
spectrum rays, presumably dependent upon the heat,
velocity, and angle of refraction of the ray as it strikes the
retinal elements, so in musical variety of tones, an educa-
tional evolution must have been at work in the recognition
and discrimination of sound waves and vibrations of vary-
ing length and intensity. But this involves no necessary
change in physical conformation, retinal or auditory, only a
functional development necessitated by the ever-increasing
demands of sound. MR. GLADSTONE has attempted to show
the ignorance of the ancients of the colour red, how many
changes in the retinal power of differentiating and answering
to the creative genius of man, exercised through the acci-
dental discoveries of the chemical art, have occurred since
the Homeric age? Take all our modern varieties of
colour :
How must certain ages of colour-training influence
THE HUMAN EAR. 165
the retina in its actual or progressive functional develop-
ment?
Similarly, how largely must certain periods of musical
genius, with their correlative expressions, in contemporaneous
musical compositions, have affected the functional powers of
the acoustic elements in the ear and the hearing brain centre
in which lay the latent capacities for their reception ?
The style, even when clipped, is a little heavy. My
anonymous correspondent here exclaims :
" Strange and marvellous creative foresight, evidence of
design within design, anticipatory through the ages of all
possible or conceivable variety or combination of varieties in
musical evolution ! "
And he concludes with this quaint general summary :
" Most perfect camera (human eye) ; most perfect tele-
phone (human ear) ; most perfect violin (human larynx) ;
most perfect hydrostatic apparatus (human heart).; most
perfect series of mechanical powers (human muscles and
tendons, &c.) ; most perfect telegraphic system (hum-an
brain and nerves) ; most perfect system of pavements
(human skin of hand and foot) ; most perfect expenditure
in relation to supply of fuel (human body itself); most
perfect chemical laboratory (human intestinal tract) ; most
perfect architectural arch (human foot and pelvis, &c.) ;
most perfect instrument (human hand, prehensile, &c.);
most perfect ' ball and sosket joint' (human shoulder) ; most
perfect mill (human teeth and jaw) ; most perfect filter
166 HEARING MUSIC.
(human lung) ; most perfect disinfectant (human bile) ;
most perfect thatch (human hair) ; most perfect screen (the
human eye-lid) ; most perfect form of government (the grey
cellular system of the human brain).
IV.
HEARING MUSIC.
WOULD you rather be blind or deaf? Most people will
illogically reply, " Neither ! " but when pressed, nine out of
ten will be found to answer, "Leave me the
DEAF AND sight of my eyes let me be deaf." Yet all
experience shows that they are wrong. Deafness
tries the temper more, isolates more, unfits for social
converse, cuts off from the world of breathing emotional
activity, tenfold more than blindness. There is something
as yet unanalysed about sound, which doubles and in-
tensifies at all points the sense of living : when we hear,
we are somehow more alive than when we see. Apart
from sound, the outward world has a dream-like and
unreal look -- -we only half believe in it ; we miss at each
moment what it contains. It presents, indeed, innumerable
pictures of still-life; but these refuse to yield up half their
secrets. If anyone is inclined to doubt this, let him stop his
DEAF FOE TEN MINUTES. 1G7
cars with cotton wool for five minutes, and sit in the room
with some intelligent friend who enjoys the full use of his
ears, and at the end of five or ten minutes let the two com-
pare notes. Of course, we must suppose that both are
doing nothing, except the one taking stock of his loss, and
the other taking stock of his gain.
I sit then, in my chair stone deaf. I look up at the
pictures on the wall a man driving a goat, a hay-stack,
and some pigs an engraving of MILLAIS lt Black
1^4-.
DEAF FOR Brunswicker/' I am tired of the sight of it.
TEN MINUTES. T , ,1 i i i i i j.1
1 notice the bird on his perch; his mouth is
wide open, he looks to me as if he were in a fit. I
point at him in an alarmed manner; my friend shakes
his head with a smile the bird 's only singing. I can't
say I am glad to hear it, for I cannot hear anything.
Presently my friend rises and goes to the door, opens it
what on earth for ? Why, in jumps the cat. I suppose he
heard it outside ; it might have mewed till doomsday, as far
as my ears were concerned. My strange companion has no
sooner sat down on his chair, than he jumps up as if stung.
He points out, in answer to my bewildered look, that the legs
are loose ; he must have heard them creak, I suppose. Then
he goes up to the clock, and begins winding it up ; he must
have noticed that it had left off ticking. I might not have
found that out for hours. Another start ! he rushes from
the room, I follow the maid has spilt the coal-scuttle all
1G8 HEARING MUSIG.
down the stairs ; he probably heard the smash,. My wife
might have fallen down-stairs and broken her neck, and I
should have known nothing about it. No sooner are we
alone again, than he once more rises, I know not why ; but
I perceive he is met at the door by someone who has called
him ; it is of no use for anyone to call me.
There happens to be a kettle on the fire, and at a par-
ticular moment my prudent friend rises. I should never
have thought of it the kettle is going to boil over; he
hears. All this is insupportable. I am being left out of
life it is worse than being shut up in the dark. I tear the
wool out of my ears long before the expiration of the ten
minutes, and my friend addresses me as follows :
" I pass over the canary, the cat, the chair, the coal-
scuttle, and the kettle. You happened to find out about
them a day after the fair by using your eyes; but besides all
this, of how much vivid life were you deprived how many
details of consciousness, how many avenues of thought were
lost to you in less than ten minutes ! As I sat, I could hear
your favourite nocturne of CHOPIN being played in the next
room. Perhaps you did not know it was raining ; nor should
I have noticed it, only I heard it on the sky-light. I there-
fore rang the bell, ordered a trap-door open in the roof to be
shut, and sent the carriage for a lady who would have other-
wise had to walk home. You did not notice a loud crack
behind you ; but, in fact, a hot coal flew out of the fire, and
1 seized it in time to prevent mischief. The postman's knock
THE MUSICAL EAR. 169
reminded me of some letters I ought to write, and I made a
note of them. The band playing outside put me in mind of
some concert-tickets I had promised to send. A neighbour-
ing church-bell reminded me of the fact that it was
Wednesday, and about a quarter to eleven o'clock. Punch,
and Judy heard in the distance reminded me of the children,
and some toys I had promised. I could hear the distant
whistle of a train. The pleasant crackling of the fire behind
me was most genial. I let a poor bee out who was buzzing
madly upon the window-pane. I heard a ring at the street-
bell, presently I heard a well-known voice in the hall. I
knew who had arrived I knew who met him; I could
shrewdly conjecture where they went together, and I guessed
not unnaturally that the children's lessons would be neg-
lected that morning, since a far more agreeable companion
had stepped in to monopolise the eldest daughter. Of all
which things, my poor friend, you knew nothing, because
your ears were stuffed with cotton wool."
Alas 1 too many of us go through life with our ears
stuffed with cotton wool. Some persons can hear, but not
well ; others can hear common sounds and musical
125.
THE MUSICAL sounds, and no one would suspect in them any
AB " defect, until it some day turns out that they do
not know the difference between " God save the Queen "
and "Auld lang syne." Thus we reach the distinction
between the common ear and the musical ear. Then, in
170 HEARING MUSIC.
connection with the musical ear, there are mysteries. Some
cannot hear sounds lower than a certain note; others cannot
hear them higher than a certain note, as musical sounds.
The mystery of the musical ear has not been solved.
Yet some things are known about it. There is probably
no ear so radically defective except a deaf ear as to
be incapable of a certain musical training. The curate
who arrives in a High Church parish without a notion of
the right note to intone upon, and with the vaguest powers
of singing it when it is given him, in a few months learns
to take fairly the various pitches in the service.
But still the question remains a physiological one why
is one ear musical and another not ? PROFESSOR HELM-
HOLTZ. whose discoveries in the sound-world are
12G.
HELMIIOI/TZ only comparable to the discoveries of NEWTON in
the world of light, has put forth an ingenious
theory somewhat to this effect : He discovered within the
ear, and soaked in a sensitive fluid, rows and rows of
microscopic nerves several hundred in number each one
of which, like the string of a pianoforte, he believed
vibrated to some note; therefore, we were to infer that
just as a note sung outside a piano will set up in the
corresponding wire a sympathetic vibration, so any sound
or sounds in the outer world represented by a nerve
wire, or nerves in the ear, could be heard by the ear;
and, as a consequence, I suppose any absence of, or defect
WHAT IS THE MUSICAL EAR? 171
in these internal nerve wires, would prevent us from hearing
the sound as others better constituted would hear it.
The next direct question of musical ear now becomes one
of inherited tendency and special training. The musical ear
127. is the ear that has learned by constantly using
nJI 1 !^ 1 !!., the same intervals to recognise the tones and
TX1IS MUSICAL
EAR? semi-tones of the usual scale, and to regard all
variations of quarter-tones as exceptions and subtleties not
to be taken account of in the general construction of melody
and harmony. Now, our octave, and our division of the
octave into tones and semi-tones, is not artificial, but natural,
founded as much upon certain laws of sound-vibration as
our notation (if I may say so) of colour is founded upon the
laws of light-vibration. But although the selection of eight
notes with their semi-tones is the natural and scientific scale,
seeing that the ear is capable of hearing impartially vast
numbers of other vibrations of sound which produce vast
numbers of other intervals, quarter-notes, &c., what we have
to do in training the musical ear is just to harp on the in-
tervals which compose the musical scale in various keys, and
on these only. In this way the ear gets gradually weaned
from sympathy with what is out of tune ceases to be dog-
like or savage-like, and becomes the cultured organ for
recognising the natural order and progression of those
measured and related vibrations which we call musical
sound. Of course, a tendency like this can be inherited
172 HEARING MUSIC.
just as much as any other, and in almost all cases it can
be improved and cultivated.
.
I have mentioned PROFESSOR HELMHOLTZ'S theory, but
have reason to think that he is not, on reconsideration,
prepared to endorse it fully. The little rows of minute
nerve-wires, each vibrating to a definite sound, is indeed a
fascinating idea; but whether true or false, it enables us, by
a kind of physical parable, to understand the sort of way in
which the ear, being capable of perceiving a large variety of
sounds, may be trained to give the preference to certain
ones by constantly allowing itself to be exercised by their
vibrations, and accustoming itself to select certain notes, and
establish between them definite arid fixed relations. The
exact physical mechanism which enables the ear to do this
may have yet to be discovered, but that it exists there can
be no doubt, and the use and cultivation of it is in fact the
use and cultivation of what we call " an ear for music."
And now I feel I owe the reader an apology. When I
have some subject which I am desirous to discuss, something
128. over which I may have been brooding for years,
AN APOLOGY mv fi rs t i ns t mc t is to plunge into the middle
J3EFOHE THE * A o
CUKTAIN. o f jt m y second is to begin at the beginning ;
my third (and this is the one I generally succumb to)
is to begin before the beginning. Thus the important
remarks which I am about to make on hearing music
MRS. DE PERKINS "AT HOME." 173
have been fairly pushed aside, first, by one preface on
the sense of hearing generally, and second, by another
preface on the musical ear in particular ; but In medias
res shall be my motto now ; no more dallying with the
subject; no more strutting in front of the curtain; no
more prologue the actors wait, the bell rings, the curtain
rises ; let us hope there is a good audience.
This is an afternoon "AT HOME." These words, you
will observe, are printed in very large type. In a corner
129. of the card we gather from the small word
pmakiNs "music," the quite mixed and genial nature
"AT HOME." o f the whole entertainment. SIGNOR BOREO
GUFFAW, the well-known bass singer, is expected to look
in, a few amateurs have promised to help if necessary,
and everyone who knows MRS. DE PERKINS is aware that
this is one of those two annual assemblies in which that
well-meaning lady endeavours to pay off the various dinners
and " At Homes " which she may herself have been
exposed to during the past year. DE PERKINS, who is
elderly, engaged in the city, and not wealthy, won't give
dinners ; he does not like these " At Homes," but he is told
that they are necessary and then GUFFAW, who taught
MRS. DE PERKINS before she was married, is very good-
natured, and so is everyone ; and the rooms, not very large,
are soon full, the staircase early ceases to be navigable,
and MRS. DE PERKINS, who really is rather nice, stands
HEARING MUSIC.
at the door, and does her best to catch everyone's eye,
although, by a certain wild and anxious look in her
face, we know that she is wondering why GUFFAW does
not begin.
Jammed into a niche which just fits me if I hold my
arms quite stiff, and stand up stark and straight, I presently
hear the eminent foreigner begin " In questa
30- Tomba 'scura." Do I enioy this song? In
m A NICIIE.
the first place I am ill at ease. I crane my
neck to look round the corner : I can just see the portly
basso with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, but just
opposite me stands my hostess receiving more guests, and
the consequence is. that GUFFAW'S "Tomba" is mixed up
with all kinds of sotto voce's " So glad you Ve come/'
" How 's - - ? " " You musn't talk/' " Tea in the next
room" whilst in front of me conversation, momentarily
suspended, recommences, all about some garden party and
someone being lost, and where they were found, and who
they were with, and so on.
Do I enjoy the music? Whether I do or not, I intend
to get out of this miserable niche away to the other room,
131. where there is tea. The song is over, and there
YOU MUST j s naturally a pause in the conversation : at
NOT TALK. W
MORAL. i as t I find someone that I wish to talk to. I
am just explaining with unequalled lucidity the new
YOU MUST NOT TALK. MORAL. 175
scheme for boring the Channel Tunnel attracting, in
short, more than one attentive listener when up trips
my anxious but smiling hostess, " You must really listen
to this gentleman who is playing : a clergyman, you know,
most gifted ; he plays nothing but the oldest masters : Bach,
and that sort, you know. Hush ! hush ! " and she glides off
tapping and silencing people right and left, just as they have
got into a nice chat and are beginning to make way as I
was, in fact.
I look round me. Disappointed, cross, irritable-looking
faces, which a moment before were smiling and animated,
and from the distance the hard tinkle of the perfectly self-
satisfied musician grating upon everyone's nerves why?
Not because it is so bad, simply because it is not wanted
then and there. Gradually, as the everlasting fugue goes
on and on, or runs into another fugue, people begin to talk
feebly. I begin about the Channel again, but by this time
my audience has dispersed ; my most devoted hearer a lady
who suffers frightfully from sea-sickness does not seem to
remember where I left off. I can't quite remember myself
we drop the subject. I have got to begin all over again,
but with something different, to someone else ; then at last
the fugue leaves off. Did anyone enjoy the music ? Then
GUFFAW is put on to sing a duet just as I was telling that
capital story about the sparrow in church. Well, of course
it was no good, all the point was taken out of it because I
had to hurry over it and end in a guilty kind of underbreath.
176 HEARING MUSIC.
1 did not stay to hear the new amateur tenor, MR. FLUTULOO,
who, I am told, sang with an eye-glass fixed rigidly in one
eye, whilst he positively wept with the other. I can believe
that the sensation he created may have been considerable,
I was a great deal too sore about the Channel Tunnel and
the sparrow, &c., to care ; in short, I left MRS. DE PERKINS'S
At Home in a very bad humour after, I regret to say, hear-
ing some music, but certainly not enjoying it. The moral
of this is
1 . Let it be either Music or conversation, but not both.
2. If music, let all the audience be musical, and all the
musicians good.
3. Don't cram the room and suffocate the singers, but ask
a moderate company, let them all be seated, and let the
conversation in between be limited to the merest inter-
change of courtesies.
4. Avoid the current musical " At Home." The DE PER-
KINS'S method never answers ; it offends the real musicians,
encourages musical impostors, and bores the company.
Some people enjoy themselves at concerts. But "some
people "and "concerts" are vague terms. You must go
132. with the right people, and you must go to the
C0 ^ RT8 right concerts. These right conditions will, of
BALLADS, course, vary according to taste and cultivation.
The right people for you are in all cases the people with
whom you are musically in sympathy. The right con-
CONCERTS AND BALLADS. 177
cevts for you are the concerts you can at least m some
measure enjoy and understand. The classical pedant
sneers at people who delight in ballad concerts and hate
WAGNER, but the greatest composers have not been above
ballads ; and although there are bad ballads, yet the cha-
racteristics of a ballad namely, that it should be lyrical,
simple, and easily understood are not bad characteristics.
Some of the greatest men have been infinite losers because
they happened to be generally unintelligible, whilst inferior
people have exercised an influence out of proportion to their
merits, simply because they made themselves generally
understood. And be it observed, that this element of in-
telligibility is one common to the ballad and all the greatest
works of art. The greatest men all " strike home." The
transfiguration is simple so is the Moses of Michael Angelo.
So is HANDEL'S Messiah taken as a whole. So is the Elijah
of MENDELSSOHN. They are a great deal more than simple,
but they are that. I have drawn a deplorable scene descrip-
tive of the hearing of music in private ; let me revive a
scene, fresh, doubtless, in the memory of many now living,
in which the hearing of music in public probably reached
its climax. I allude to the production of MENDELSSOHN'S
Elijah at the Birmingham festival of 1846, upon which
occasion MENDELSSOHN himself wielded the conductor's
baton.
On that memorable August morning in the year 184G,
12
178 HEARING MUSIC.
when, punctual to the minute, FELIX MENDELSSOHN stepped
133. into the conductor's seat, and, facing the im-
THE'-ELiJAH" mense au ^ience assembled in the noble Town
AT BIRMING-
HAM IN 184G. jjall of Birmingham, was received with a storm
MENDELS-
SOHN, of applause which was taken up and redoubled by
the chorus and orchestra how little did that vast audience
know that in little more than a year from that time the
heart of the great composer would have ceased to beat !
That day, we must always think, was the crowning moment
of his life, and that great oratorio seems to us the culmina-
tion of his mighty musical and dramatic faculty. All those
who were present declare that that first public performance
was one never to be forgotten the novelty of treatment, the
startling effects, the enchanting subjects, the prodigious
daring of some of the situations, the heavenly melodies
which have since become musical watchwards, and, above
all, the presence of the composer, who sent an electric thrill
through the room, and inspired chorus, band, and singers
with the same lofty enthusiasm which made him so great
and irresistible in achievement all this may now, alas, be
remembered, but can never be reproduced. It made the
hearing of the music of Elijah for the first time a perfectly
typical occasion, and one whose conditions, as far as they
are realisable, should never cease to be striven after.
A dire contrast to such performances as this may be found
any day in those extraordinary entertainments called mixed
MIXED CONCERTS. 179
concerts, where every style and every composer, from
134. BACH to OFFENBACH save the mark ! may be
THE MIXED heard. From these the true musician retires
MONSTER
CONCERT. w ith what may be called a harmonic indigestion
of the worst possible description. MENDELSSOHN, SPOHR,
MEYERBEER, MOSCHELES, and VON BULOW, have in turn
expressed their amazement and horror at the popular notion
of a concert programme. But all this is a part of the
general state of musical ignorance in England, and can onl y
disappear when increased culture makes the incongruity of
such mixtures apparent to their present admirers.
There are other kinds of mixed concerts which have their
excuse, but they are private ; there are no contradictions,
135. no aggravations, no jolts in them. We are
THE MIXED
not shocked out of one phase of emotion into
CHAMBER
CONCERT, another; we are not compelled to swallow an
Italian buffo song after a duet from MOZART'S requiem, or
a ballad of CLARIBEL, followed by a bit of SPOHR'S Last
Judgment. And yet the programme is mixed, varied, as
the conversation of friends is varied, flitting bird-like
through many lands, pausing above giddy precipices,
gliding over summer seas, lingering in bright meadows,
poised above populous cities, lingering about the habita-
tions of man. But no more prosy efforts to describe what
is indescribable ; let the curtain rise once more and let the
actors themselves appear before me.
12 *
180 HEARING MUSIC.
She is fair, with brown-red hair; she is serene, with one
of those quiet, equable temperaments, whose privilege it
is to blend others into harmony by yielding
SHADOWS OF to each new wave of thought and feeling as it
rises, with that sort of simple, unaffected plea-
sure, the very sight of which makes others happy. Alas !
she has been dead these many summers ; yet it is the
privilege of memory to unlock the doors of old rooms,
and find there suddenly, as in a dream, the scenes
that have faded out of the real world for ever. For a
moment I close my eyes. It is an autumn evening by the
sea. How pleasantly the waves came plashing in as we
paced the shore in the deepening light ! We spoke of those
weird songs of SCHUBERT which seetn like sad eyes looking
out into the sunset over some waste of measureless waters;
we spoke of those Nocturnes of CIIOPIN, like dream-scenes,
painted on tinted backgrounds.
"His life/' said FERDINAND, "was what NOVALIS would
have called a dream within a dream*"
" Yes," I answered, " but a dream always starting from
reality and breaking into it again."
" And is not that reflected in his music ? " rejoined
ESTELLE. " It makes it sometimes quite terrible to me, the
harsh contrast between the reality and the dream, a chord,
a transition bar, and then fainter and fainter grows the
shadow-land, so intensely real and passionate the moment
before, it darkens and melts into a thin, cold mist,
SHADOWS OF THE PAST. 181
just as those gorgeous shadows of purple and orange
011 the sea, which seemed a minute ago almost substantial,
melt and leave the cold sea dark, and the air keen and
sharp."
"Yes, that was the history of CHOPIN'S life; the love
of MADAME SAND was his dream, and the awakening
was the cold sea and the sharp, keen air that killed
him."
" But before the end what dreams haunted him, frag-
ments of the never- forgotten days, embalmed in fugitive
melody, and mystically woven harmonies ! I think he must
have lived over again perfectly in such moments. They
were the realities, and the outer life, latterly at least, became
the dream. Listen !
" What sweetness is here, this grassy bank, these droop-
ing citron flowers, these glowing azaleas, fringing the
summer Islet, set like a jewel in the bosom of the Mediter-
ranean ! The name of LUCREZIA FLORIANI rises to my
lips, the name of the PRINCE KAROL, who is CHOPIN. Time
is not, -these skies are eternally blue, this welling up of
crystal water, just kissing the fringe of drooping blossom
against the shore, this hum of insect life, breaking the
silence, only to make the summer air more slumbrous, and
the little rain-cloud on the horizon, which, toward evening,
will creep up, until the distance is blotted out, and t'ne
black sky is rent with forked lightning. Such things
182 HEARING MUSIC.
entered into CHOPIN'S soul, and live for ever in his profound
and strange musical reveries.
" But apart from this deeply personal element, the
deepest thing of all, as it is in the nature of every
true Pole, was the undertone of sad patriotism; this
pierces when least expected, this is never long absent.
Listen 1
" It is a dazzling crowd, glittering with diamond lights
a profusion of rare jewels; the halls are filled with perfume,
the strains of a mazurka are in the air, they seem to call
forth as by magic, and support with the breath of some
mystic life, these floating, swaying forms of beautiful women,
and these countrymen of CHOPIN, without a country, and
as the dance goes weaving on, with a certain dreamy and
pensive grace, we perceive that in the heart of the music
there is a deep wound, a minor chord of inextinguishable
pain, hidden by lovely arabesques of subtle sweetness, win-
ning, beguiling, subduing; but never for long hiding the
forlorn sorrow of a hopeless, but undying patriotism. Now
it is a Polonaise. Listen !
" What enterprise, what indomitable effort to achieve the
impossible, what frantic exploits, as of one resolved to die
on the battle-field, but before dying to overwhelm with
deeds of intrepid valour his terrible and relentless foe !
The pauses are the pauses of sheer exhaustion, in them we
A NIGHT IN THE PAST. 183
catch through the sulphurous clouds a sight of remote
battle-scenes and distant combinations, until the warrior
rises again in his strength, and once more for a time his
enemies.fly scattered."
" I shall think of all this when I play your favourite
Polonaise." She drew her shawl close to her the mist
crept round the bay it was no longer summer ; we went
in, we three, how happy, how harmonious, blended by the
grace the free, the tender grace of one lovely and beloved
presence !
Unlock the door let no footfall from the present disturb
this shadow-scene. It is the old room the familiar room.
I see her there. There is no sense of strange-
137.
A NIGIIT IN ness or unreality about her ; she smiles, as she
was wont to smile, she moves softly her fingers
turn the music leaves the candles are lighted her face is
half in shade I can hear her low melodious laugh. I
seem to be once more holding my Stradivarius violin
lovingly. What ! there is no sign of dust, or age, or
neglect about this long-closed room. As we go back to
past chapters of a beloved story, so have I gone back to
read again a fragment of life, and as I look, and look,
and look, the intervening years roll away, the shadows
become real, "till only the dead seem living, and only the
living seem dead."
Let it be MENDELSSOHN'S D minor trio, the playing of
184, HEARING MUSIC.
that night remains with me we seemed alive sensitively
alive to every vibration ; her fingers caressed the cool ivory
keys lovingly, the Stradivarius spoke rapturously to the
lightest touch of the bow, the full-toned violoncello gave
out the deep but tender notes, like the voices of the sea in
enchanted caves. How clean and " seizing/' as the French
say, was her rendering of the opening movement ! How
wonderfully woven-in were the parts ! We all three made
but one, yet retaining our perfect individualities. A
mystic presence invisible seemed to be with us, we felt as if
playing in the presence of the great, the gentle MENDELS-
SOHN ; and though we played, so absorbed were we, that we
seemed at the same moment to be following our own music
like listeners, in ourselves and out of ourselves. Between
the movements we spoke not. I marked the flush upon
her cheek the bright light in her eyes. He was grave,
intensely pre-occupied the dream-power was upon us all.
The peace and full contentment of the slow movement with
its rich and measured flow of melody melting at last into
that heavenly trance at the close, which leaves us at the
open gates of Paradise ; then the sudden break at the
scherzo, as though a joyous troop of lower earth-spirits had
burst in to tear us away from the divine contemplation, and
toss us back into a world of wild uproar and merriment ;
then a slight pause before the tempestuous, but intensely
earnest, conclusion. Here is the battle of life, with its
suspense, its failure, its endeavour striving for the
A NIGHT IN THE PAST. 385
victory, its wild and passionate overthrow, its indomitable
recovery and untamed valour; that is the bracing and
sublime atmosphere of the last movement more true to
life than ecstasy, more wholesome than peace, more
dignified than pleasure; and that is where the D minor
trio leaves us.
Then we drifted into talk of MENDELSSOHN. As she sat
she occasionally played some fragment from a concerto
some striking chord from the St. Paul, some passage from
Ruy Bias, or an echo from the incomparably delicate over-
ture to the beautiful " Melusine,'' till one said " Sing," and
she sang from SCHUMANN, the ballads from HEINE those
tragedies and melodramas in three verses, or in two lines,
and BRAHM'S " Guten Abend, Gute Nacht.'- 7 Then followed
songs without words, and sitting in the shadow I saw her
face in the light, and felt her spirit rise and fall upon the
pulses of invisible sound, in unison with ours. Then came
some of ERNST'S reveries on the violin, and so the evening
wore away, and we took no account of the hours.
Were there any other listeners ? Yes, at times one and
another of them would recall a passage a likeness between
MENDELSSOHN and BACH, a phrase of SCARLATTI, or a com-
bination of WAGNER in a BKAHM'S movement.
This, if you like, was a mixed programme, but its parts
were mixed with subtle sympathies, and united by the
finest threads of thought and emotion. Thus we moved
on from one delight to another with no sense of un-
186 HEARING MUSIC.
pleasant or disjointed break as those who pass out of a
lovely grotto into the sunlight, and after winding through
hedge-rows of May bloom to the quiet shore, pass back
into a garden of tall trees and smooth lawns, and thence
to some lovely conservatory filled with tropical bloom, thence
to a marble vestibule, thence to halls of tapestry, and
luxurious couches and repose. And there has been no
break nothing has jarred upon us in the midst of variety.
Hand in hand we have been with friends; we have seen
smiles upon dear faces. We have poured forth words, and
soul has been revealed to soul ; and without, the world of
fair things has imaged the life of vivid and inexhaustible
thought and feeling within. Compare, I pray you, these
parables of " Hearing Music " aright, with the strange and
disjointed legend of "MRS. DE PERKINS and her musical
At Home."
*
I will take a wider sweep. I have received the keenest
national impressions from music.
At midnight I heard the players pass by. The warm
Italian air, scarce chilled by the night, came in from the
orange gardens. I leaned my head forward to
138> breathe its full fragrance. The musicians had
ITALY.
come from yonder lighted palace ; now they pass
on up through the groves of citron and myrtle, from the
distant deep shadows, the regular pulse of the music brings
back the feeling of the dance ; it is a mere echo, a shadow
HOLLAND. EMOTION AND THE PAINTER. 187
dance fainter and fainter now ; I can hear it no more. I
look up, the stars burn like gold.
All Italy in a moment is resumed for me in that slight
picture. A few bars of music, heard at random, may conjure
it up again first the emotion, then the picture.
The Feast of the Kermess was over in Amsterdam. The
town filled with country people had been emptying all
through the night. The booths in the market-
139- places were struck. I stood high up. looking
HOLLAND. r
over the network of canals towards the Scheldt.
Above my head I heard the cry of the wild swan, winging
its way southward from Sweden, and below a rough chorus
of men and women came over the bridge. It was loud,
boisterous singing, but in parts well defined, rhythmic, and
full of a strong charm; they passed into a side street; the
drinking chorus seemed to split into fragments and then
cease. How often has it since rung in my ears, and so
often has it brought back with it the hearty, coarse, eager
life of Holland, and the keen, brackish odour of the wind
blowing in from the North Sea.
But in each case observe the peculiar, direct power which
music has of dealing with the nerve centres.
140.
EMOTION AND It is not the image which is recalled and Avhich
E> brings back the feeling, but the sound awakes
directly a peculiar rhythm of nervous wave-motion, which
188 HEARING MUSIC.
is the physical vehicle for a peculiar feeling. Thus a
breath of the past in a desert at first unpeopled, the very
atmosphere of a past moment is restored, in which mystic
air the forms of dead scenes and persons begin to live and
grow again, and at last become intensely vivid. In this,
note that music differs from every other art. The painter
and poet alike depend directly upon scenes and concrete
images for their emotion, but the musician depends directly
upon emotion for his scenes and images, and even when these
are absent, he is not less potent sometimes more so for he
can handle and mould the temperature of the mind itself at
will, wind up feeling unconnected with thought through
every semitone, modulate and change it, fit and unfit us for
exertion, make us forget the hard, persistent images of
pain and trouble, and the coarse realism that damps joy,
by creating an atmosphere within in which these cannot
breathe, and so are expelled as to any power they may
have to move us, actually expelled for a season from the
mind.
There is a phrase, " I was carried away by the music."
That expression is true to feeling ; it means, " When I heard
this or that, I ceased to be affected by the out-
JIAGIC OP ward things or thoughts which a moment before
moved me; I entered a world of other feeling,
O r what I before possessed was so heightened and changed
that I seemed to have been ' carried away ' from the old
SECRET OF THE AUDITORY NERVE. 189
thing in a moment." But it would be sti)l truer to say,
not " music carried me away," but " music carried away, or
changed, the mood, and with it the significance of the
things which occupied me in that mood."
The easy command over the emotions possessed by sound,
and elaborated by the art of music, is due to the direct
142. impact of the air-waves upon the drum of the
SECRET OF ear -which collects them and sends them to
THE AUDI-
TORY NERVE, the seat of consciousness in the brain by means
of the auditory nerve. The same, of course, is true of
the waves of colour upon the eye, scent upon the nose,
and vibrations of touch taken by the brain even from the
most distant nerve in the body. But the auditory nerve has
in some things a strange advantage and prerogative of power
over the others. First, the /distance from the ear to the
brain is shorter than that of any other of the sensitive
surfaces, so the time taken to convey the impressions of
sound is less, and therefore the impact more direct. This
measured by time is infinitesimal, but measured by emotional
effect it counts for much. Secondly, the vibrations of sound
as distinguished from the vibrations of light, and even the
vibrations of touch, which are, after all, differently local,
the vibrations of sound induce a sympathetic vibration iu
every nerve in the body ; they set it going, in short, as the
strings of a piano are set going by the stroke of a hammer on
the floor, and when the sound is excessive or peculiar, all the
190 HEARING MUSIC.
great ganglionic centres are disturbed, the diaphragm and
many other nerves and muscles are influenced, the stomach
is affected, the spine " creeps/' as we say, the heart quickens
and throbs with strong beatings in the throat. Thus a
curiously sympathetic action is set up through this phy-
sical peculiarity which sound has of shaking, moving, and
at times causing to tremble the human body.
But the cause of the sympathetic action of the great
ganglionic centres under the pulsations of sound lies deeper
still. It is to be found in the fact that the auditory nerve is
closely connected, at its origin in the medulla oblongata of
the brain, with that of the important nervus vagus or pneu-
mogastic supplying the heart, lungs, and the most important
abdominal viscera. It is also in intimate communication
with the branches of the great sympathetic nerve from the
ganglia which supply the muscles regulating the tension of
the ear's drum, and which modify the effect of the waves
of sound upon it. And these branches, again, are in direct
communication with the vagus and the great ganglionic
centres, controlling the action of the heart and stomach.
Thus excitation of the auditory nerve readily agitates these
close neighbours, and they proceed to spread the influence
far and wide through all the delicate network of sympathetic
nerve telegraphy which pervades the entire system. Thus
the effect of sound is speedily propagated through myriad
side-channels, until the whole body is thrilling with its con-
fluent waves.
MUSIC IN A ROOM, MUSIC AND SPACE. 191
Now we can explain, perhaps, why it is that our musical
sensations are different in small rooms and large ones, or, to
speak more closely, why the relations between the
MUSIC IN A volume of sound and the space to be filled must
be suitable in order to produce the right effect.
I can sit close to a piano and listen to a " Lied ohne Worte/ 7
I can take in every inflection of touch with ease, not a refine-
ment is lost, but if I go to the end of a long room, the
impact is less direct, the pleasure is less intense : the player
must then exaggerate all his effects, hence a loss of refine-
ment and ease. Public players and singers constantly make
shipwreck thus in private rooms. Accustomed to vast
spaces, they roar and bang until the audience is deaf, and
the only reason why the unknowing applaud on such occa-
sions, and the only difference, as far as they are concerned,
between the professional and the amateur, is simply that the
first is so much louder than the second. This makes them
clap their hands and cry " Bravo ! " but in reality they are
applauding a defect.
The only musical sounds which really master vast spaces
like the Albert Hall are those o a mighty organ or an
immense chorus. The Handel Festival choruses
144.
MUSIC AND are fairly proportioned to the Crystal Palace, but
on one occasion, when a terrific thunderstorm
burst over Sydenham in the middle of Israel in Egypt, every
one beneath that crystal dome felt that, acoustically, the
192 HEARING MUSIC.
peal of thunder was very superior to the whole power of the
chorus, because the relation between the space to be filled and
the volume of sound required to fill it was in better proportion.
But there is still something which has not yet been said
for small sounds in large places. Transport yourself in
imagination to the Albert Hall on some night when, as is
usually the case, there is but a scanty orchestra, and
presently a new mystery of sound will present itself to you.
At first you will be disappointed. Anyone can hear that
the hall is not properly occupied by the sound ; the violins
should be trebled at least, several of the wind instruments
doubled, &c. You think you will not listen to this charming
E flat symphony of MOZART ; you cannot help feeling that
you lose a delicate inflection here, a staccato there, a flute
tone, a pianissimo on the drum, or a whole piece of counter
melody, owing to the scattered conditions of isolated vibra-
tions lost in space.
But you have still something to learn, something like a
new musical truth, which few people seem yet to have
noticed. Listen ! The sounds from the band
145.
SODND- reach you too late, perhaps. They are not
*' simultaneous ; the impact on the ear is some-
what feeble, you must even strain attentively to catch
what is passing, but the more you do so the easier it
becomes, just as the eye, in looking through a lens, may
see all dim, but gaze on until the objects grow sharp and
SOUND-FILTERING. 193
clear. The nerves of the eye have adapted themselves to
the new conditions, the longer you look the better you
see. So in these vast uncomfortable spaces, the longer you
listen the better you hear. A certain special training is
required, and then gradually a new quality is perceived we
must give the process a new name " sound filtering/' The
Albert Hall and the Crystal Palace are great Sound-filters.
From this point of view, which it requires some delicate and
attentive ear-culture to appreciate, new delights are born
from the defective space conditions usually complained of.
I have heard the voice of Madame Lemmens-Sherrington in
the extreme distance at the Crystal Palace, when she was
exerting herself to the utmost, and it sounded like a voice
from heaven, full of unearthly, far-away sweetness ; the
same intensity and volume in a small room would have been
intolerable. I have heard Bottesini on the double-bass in
the open air with similar effect.
Listen to an orchestra or quartet, however fine, in a
moderate-sized room ; there is the catgut, the rosin, the
scrape, the bite of horse-hair on strings, the earthly cannot
be completely got rid of, but space will filter all that, and
leave nothing but a kind of spiritual disembodied sound, like
the tones of those plugged pipes in the organ that seem to
steal out of some remote cloud-land with a certain veiled
sweetness that makes us hold our breath.
Since I have learned to listen to these peculiar effects in
all their strange gradations, a new class of musical impres-
13
194 HEARING MUSIC.
sions has been revealed to me, and I have become miu.-li
reconciled to hearing music in vast spaces. I do not go
there for the kind of normal impressions, for the direct study,
for the strong, immediate impact gained from music in a
moderately-sized room I lose much of all that but I gain
a number of new abnormal effects, which also have a power
over certain hidden depths and distant fastnesses of the
emotional region.
Music has a vast future before it. We are only now
beginning to find out some of its uses. With the one
exception of its obvious and admitted helpful-
14G.
BENEFICENCE ness, as an adjunct of religious worship, as a
vehicle for and incentive of religious feeling, I
had almost said that we had as yet discovered none of its
uses. It has been the toy of the rich, it has often been a
source of mere degradation to both rich and poor, it has
been treated as mere jingle and noise supplying a rhythm
for the dance, a kind of Terpsichorean tom-tom or serving
to start a Bacchanalian chorus the chief feature of which
has certainly not been the music. And yet those who have
their eyes and ears open, may read in these primitive uses
whilst they run the hints of music's future destiny as a
vast civiliser, recreator, health-giver, work-inspirer, and
purifier of man's life. The horse knows what he owes to
his bells. The factory girls have been instinctively forced
into singing, finding in it a solace and assistance in work.
MUSIC AS A RESTORATIVE. 195
And for music, the health-giver, what an untrodden field
is there ! Have we never known an invalid forget pain
and weariness under the stimulus of music? Have you
never seen a pale cheek flush up, a dull eye sparkle, an
alertness and vigour take possession of the \vhole frame,
and animation succeed to apathy? What does all this
mean ? It means a truth that we have not fully grasped,
a truth pregnant with vast results to body and mind. It
means that music attacks the nervous system directly,
reaches and rouses where physic and change of air can
neither reach nor rouse.
Music will some day become a powerful and acknowledged
therapeutic. And it is one especially appropriate to this
excited age. Half our diseases, some physicians
MUSIC AS A say all our diseases, come from disorder of the
RESTORATIVE. TT MI /> , 1 1 1
nerves. How many ills ot the mind precede
the ills of the body ! Boredom makes more patients than
fever, want of interest and excitement, stagnation of the
emotional life, or the fatigue of over-wrought emotion,
lies at the root of half the ill-health of our young men
and women. Can we doubt the power of music to break
up that stagnation? Or, again, can we doubt its power
to soothe? to recreate an over-strained emotional life, by
bending the bow the other way? There .are moods of
exhausted feeling in which certain kinds of music would
act like poison, just as whip and spur which encourage
13 *
196 HEARING MUSIC.
the racer at first, tire him to death at last. There are other
kinds of music which soothe, and, if I may use the word,
lubricate the worn ways of the nervous centres. You will
ask what music is good for that? We reply, judgment and
common-sense, and, above all, sympathy, affection al and
musical sympathy, will partly be your guide, but experience
must decide. Let some friend well versed in the divine
art sit at the piano, and let the tired one lie on a couch
and prescribe for herself or for himself. This will happen :
" Do not play that Tannhduser overture just now, it
wears me out, I cannot bear it " ; or, " Yes sing that
'Du bist die Huh/ and after that I must hear MENDELS-
SOHN'S ' Notturno,' out of the Midsummer Night's Dream " ;
and then and then what must come next must be left
to the tact and quick sympathy of the musician. I have
known cases where an hour of this treatment did more good
than bottlesf ul of bark or pailsful of globules ; but I do not
wish to over-state the case. I merely plead for an unrecog-
nised truth, and I point to a NEW VOCATION the vocation
of the Musical Healer.
How many a girl might turn her at present uncared-for
and generally useless musical abilities to this gentle and
tender human use. Let her try. At the end
THE MUSICAL of the seance, let her and her patient note
the abatement of the head-ache brought about
directly by the counter excitement of a nerve-current set
THE MUSICAL HEALER. 197
up by music. Let her friend admit that she has suffered
less during that hour, the mind having heen completely
called off from the contemplation of a special pain, aiid
the pain meanwhile having passed or abated. There are
cases chiefly connected with disorders of the spine, cases of
apathy, where music is almost the only thing which seems
to stir the torpid nerves and set up a commotion, quickening
the heart and flushing the cheek. Then, I say, let music
open the shut gate, and let health come in that way,
ceelestis janitor aulae. But I want, before I pass, to fix
my musical healer upon the reader's mind. She is gentle,
she is glowing with health, but not boisterous ; she has
a quick sympathy for pain ; she has a cool, soft hand that
does the hot brow good ; she rather moves than walks :
the sound of her foot-fall is seldom heard. Oh, Alma !
the fostering one, the healing presence, you are in many
households, but you hardly know your powers; the sick
bless you; they love to hear your voice; but days and
weeks pass, and you never exercise your gifts for them.
You are a beautiful musician, but your music would not
make you the healer without your tact in applying it, your
sympathy, your quick judgment, your watchfulness of effect,
your faculty of giving yourself when you sing and when
you play. Tt is the union of musical talent with personal
qualities like yours, that will give you grace to apply the
medicine of music to disease.
Have you ever thought of that? You have played
198 HEARING MUSIC.
casually to the weary, the idle, or even the sick, but you
have not with reflection played to refresh, to stimulate, or
to soothe ; and you cannot do this all at once.
1. You must have the idea of doing it : that is, you must
conceive of music as a therapeutic art.
2. You must gain a certain easy command of a wide
range of compositions that you may select your remedies
wisely.
3. You must take care to establish between yourself and
your patients that kindly rapport which will predispose
them to listen to you ; it must be the hand of something
like a friend upon the white keys or upon the strings of a
zither, an instrument of heavenly soothing qualities as of
harps in the wind at sunset. It must be the voice of some-
thing like a friend ; the voice that has said with no feigned
earnestness, but with the wide, warm love of a Christ-like
nature, " I wish I could do you good." Such a voice will
sing well and pleasantly, and bring peace.
4. Self- training, judgment, and experience generally.
The music-healer must indeed have gifts of mind, but hers
will be almost as much a vocation to be learnt as that of
nursing itself. She must study different kinds of tempera-
ment and disease, watch and write down and remember the
effect which certain pieces or kinds of music have on
certain temperaments. But the fascination of the new
calling would lie in the delight of its exercise, the variety
and endless excitement and surprises of its results, the inces-
"MUSIC AND MORALS" AGAIN. 199
snnt study of character, the constant self-training and culti-
vation of sympathy for a definite and immediate end, and
in the intense happiness of feeling that upon the waves of
heavenly melody and harmony which lifted up your own
soul, another's pain and distress were floating away, and
that you had been the active agent in procuring this pleasure,
this relief, this recovery.
Let some pen more competent than mine expand this new
doctrine of " music considered as a therapeutic/' If it
found support from any well-accredited medical authority,
with what faith and favour would it be received by
thousands of sufferers ! with what alacrity would spring
up right and left our musical healers, coveting and exercis-
ing earnestly the best gifts of character and training ! It
would not be long before we had a hand-book on the sub-
ject, with suggestions for a course of treatment based on
actual experience.
Music is not only a body healer ; it is a mind regulator.
149. The great educational function of music remains
"MUSIC AND a i mos t to be discovered. The future mission
MORALS
AGAIN. o f music for the million is the DISCIPLINE
OF EMOTION.
What is the ruin of art? Ill-regulated emotion.
What is the ruin of life ? Again, ill-regulated emotion.
What mars happiness ? What destroys manliness ? What
sullies womanhood ? What checks enterprise ? What spoils
200 HEARING MUSIC.
success ? Constantly the same ill-regulated emotion. The
tongue is a fire, an uncontrolled and passionate outburst
swallows up many virtues, and blots out weeks of kindness.
There is one thing more important than knowing self; it is
governing self. There is one thing better than crushing
impulse ; it is using impulse. The life of the ascetic is half
true, the life of the voluptuary is the other half true. The
stoic may be said to be blind at least of one eye. The cynic
is very nearly blind of both, since the power and the
passion and the splendid uses of existence are hidden from
him, and all these go wrong in various ways, from abusing,
misusing, or neglecting the emotional life.
The Greek was not far wrong when he laid such stress on
gymnastics and music. Of music, indeed, in its modern,
150. exhaustive, and subtle developments, as the
s *c' language of the emotions, he knew nothing;
DISCIPLINE, but his faint guess was with a certain fine and
unerring instinct in the right direction; shame upon us
that, in the blaze of modern music, we have almost missed
its deepest meaning ! The Greek at least understood how
sound regulated motion, which is, after all, only the
physical expression of emotion ; not a procession, not a
social gathering, not a gymnasium, nay, not even an im-
portant oration, was thought complete without the intro-
duction of musical sound, and that not as a mere jingle or
pastime, out to regulate the order, the variety, the intensity
THE GREEKS' "MUSICAL" DISCIPLINE. 201
of bodily motions, actions, and words, so that throughout
there might be an elaborate discipline carried on through
musical sound, a discipline which, thus learned at the
schools, met the Greek again at every turn in his social and
political life, and ended by making his earth-life that rounded
model of physical and intellectual harmony, and perfection
which has made at once the despair and wonder of sculptors,
poets, and philosophers of all ages.
And we living in the full development of this divine art
of Music, put it to less practical uses than the Greek, who
never got beyond music as a rhythmic and melodic regulator
of dancing, feasting, and oratory !
It remains for us to take up the pregnant hint, and claim
modern music as the great organ of emotional culture and
emotional discipline. This practical view of the unique and
perfect functions of the musical art is, I think, sufficiently
new to require a little further explanation.
" How," it will be asked, " apart from mere pleasure
pleasure, if you will, of a harmless and elevating kind am
I a bit better for the hearing of music ? "
In answering this question, I leave out the effect pro-
duced on bodily health through the agitation of the nervous
centres by musical sound, as dwelt upon above. I will come
to close quarters again with Music and Morals, and I will
show how hearing music in the right way gets up, as it
were, the steam power of emotion, collects it, concentrates
202 HEARING MUSIC.
it, and then puts it through such innumerable stages of
discipline, that the very force of emotion which, allowed
to run wild, brings ruin into life, grows, through the right
hearing of great and skilful music, docile, controlled,
indefinitely plastic, or at the call of the will, resistless in
nJght.
Music, in short, is bound, when properly used and under-
stood, to train us in the exercise of our emotions, as the
gymnasium trains us in the exercise of our limbs. The
Greek understood both these uses, we probably understand
neither.
First, then, music rouses the emotions. Inward activities
long dormant or never before awakened, are called up, and
151. become new powers within the breast ; for,
MECHANISM reinem ber, emotion nerves for action. The
OF THE EMO-
TIONAL ART. stupidest horse that goes up hill to the sound
of bells, the timidest soldier that marches to battle with
fife and drum, the most delicate girl who spins round
tireless in the dance, the poorest labourer who sings at
his work any of them are good enough to prove that
music rouses and sustains emotion.
But, secondly, music disciplines and controls emotion.
That is the explanation of the art of music, as distin-
guished from the mere power of the musical sound. You
can rouse with a stroke ; but to guide, to moderate, to con-
trol) to raise and depress, to combine, to work out a definite
TALE OF A "SONG WITHOUT WORDS: 1 203
scheme involving appropriate relations and proportions of
force, and various mobility for this you require the subtle
machinery of an art, and the direct machinery for stirring
up and regulating emotion, is the wonderful vibratory
mechanism created by the art of music.
Those who wish to see how, as the hand-maid to thought,
music steps in to elaborate and control emotion, I will refer
152. to my analysis of Elijah, in Music and Morals ;
, ( g^^^ T ^_but I wish to give here a short example of the
our WORDS." wav j n w hi cn a train of abstract emotion, capable
of being fitted to different ideas, or capable of underlying
more than one series of mental events (so long as the rela-
tions of them be similar and parallel), can be roused and
developed in a fixed artistic form by music. My present
limits will not allow me to take one of the great symphonies
of BEETHOVEN or MENDELSSOHN for this. I will select a
" Lied ohne Worte " ; let us take, for instance, No. 10, the
fourth Lied of the Second Book. I will mention the bars
by their numbers, instead of using technical terms, such as
a key of D or F, subdominant, tonic, &c. It is difficult to
describe mental states apart from particular thoughts, but as
far as possible we will try to do so, and so express the
consciousness of a state of mind which might be equally
appropriate to several separate and distinct, though similar
and parallel trains of thought.
Understand what I mean by similar and parallel trains of
204 HEARING MUSIC.
thought. Let me even appeal to the eye, and put my similar
thoughts in parallel columns, thus :
I. Man losing his temper. I. Sea ruffled with wind.
IL Man lost his temper II. Sea convulsed.
III. Smashes the furniture. IIL Thunder and lightning.
IV. Is appeased hy wife. IV. Blue sky, wind drops.
V. All is forgiven and forgotten. V Sun breaks out, sea calnu
One, and the same train of emotion, or general cast of
feeling may fitly underlie such two progressive scenes; but
the events must in every case be similar in tone, and run
parallel ; only in this sense does music, as it is sometimes
loosely said, mean all sorts of things to different people.
*I now return to an emotional analysis of Lied IV., of
Book II., MENDELSSOHN. With the first bars of rapid semi-
153. quavers, increasing from p to sf, we are thrown
LIED OHNE | n O a state of restless emotion, dashed (bars
WORTE,
BOOK n. 4. 4^ 5^ g^ with suspense, as when one heaves
and holds his breath at a passing thought of some agitating
possibility (7, 8, 9, 10), the flash of suspense passes off,
lowering back the tone of mind to its first state ; that state,
instead of subsiding as before, passes into a reflex sort of
reasoning upon itself, as though one said (15, 16, 17, 2 18),
" But why should I disquiet myself in vain ? " (18, 19, 20) .
"I will resist, I will shake it off (21), I will be free (22)
the cloud has passed (23), I see my joy (24, 25, 26, 27, 28,
29. 30). O ecstatic vision, I lose myself in this splendid
LIED OHNE WORTE, BOOK II. 205
revelation, I float out upon the tide of triumph. Now I
rest, bathed in tranquil peace, and perfect satisfaction (31,
32, 33), I prolong the dream." But already the ecstatic
glow has cooled (33, 34, 35, 36), a faint touch of earth
bitterness, a misgiving (D sharp) has crept in (37, 38, 39,
40, 41, 42), and is confirmed until the vision of bliss is
almost obliterated, and the emotion is in danger of sinking
back at once to its first condition of morbid restlessness,
but that would be monotonous (45) ; at this point it is,
therefore, caught by new reflex action of the feelings, and
a struggle takes place (46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51), represented
by the opening subject struggling up in the bass, checked,
then struggling up in the treble, checked at sf, and then
cresc., struggling up (51) once more. Then there is a
pause, emotion is at a standstill, and at last grows almost
tepid and indifferent ; dropping at 57, p and dim., almost
listless, when at 60 the struggle recommences with fresh
violence, the great effort of the mind to cast out the restless,
passionate broodings of the first page (60 to 71), produces a
storm of conflicting emotions, in which now one side, now
another seems uppermost, till at last the mind, trembling
on the morbid verge, passes over the line with a kind of
wilful and helpless self-surrender ; but this time the experi-
ences through which it has passed make it impossible quite
to repeat the morbid and restless series, and (72) only half
the first subject is given, the emotion is hampered, it does
not run easily, it cannot get on, then (76) the same phrase
206 HEARING MUSIC,
over again, piu f, with growing impatience, a change of
some sort is evidently at hand (81), the old subject is
tossed away as worthless and unfit for the purpose, as the
spirit feels itself breathed upon once more, and held by
some new force, through a series of bars (81 to 87), until
expectancy is crowned, and with a crescendo of ascending
octaves, which makes us fairly hold our breath, whilst the
action of the pulse is rapidly quickened, suddenly, but this
time on a higher pitch, and with quite bewildering power
of effect the glory breaks again upon the soul, and we
seem "rapt from the fickle and the frail/' and caught up
into that splendid air of joy and bounding triumph. The
poor shaken and earth-worn spirit is thus held for a little
space in Paradise. It is its last gleam of perfect peace.
Already at 103, the vision has well-nigh faded out; at
111 the light of common day has been fairly reached, and
the perilous struggle between morbid brooding and noble
endurance is in danger of recommencing. Four times, at
119, 123, 125, and 126, the morbid passage reminding us of
the opening phrase, knocks (ff] passionately for admittance,
and is sternly negatived by the bass. At 129, 130, 131,
there is a very natural pause of brief exhaustion zip. At
132 the emotion is stirred, but this time less strongly ; we
feel that a new and more normal life is now going to open
out, into which indeed we are not permitted to enter, for
the Lied draws to its close. The vision of triumph has had
its own chastening and purifying effect, although the
TRAINING OF ABSTRACT EMOTION. 207
triumph oi' joy is evidently not near, still the restless aud
passionate mood of anxious brooding, which so unfits for
the life that has still to be lived out, has also passed ; the
last unemphatic memory of it occurs 138, not even half the
first subject as before, is repeated only one bar of it, and
the emotion is then left unimpassioned and suspended on
a long D, the same chord for six bars, without change in
treble or bass, serving to close the piece, and leaving the
mind in a self-contained and reconciled, if not a happy
mood, ready now to enter without harrowing pre-occupation
upon the more ordinary phases and pursuits of life.
Now if music does really rouse and then take in hand and
rule at its will, and thereby teach us to rule the emotions,
154. it is obvious that we are, when we hear music
TRAINING OF intelligently and sympathetically, actually culti-
EMOTION. V at'ing abstract habits of mind which may after-
wards be transferred as trained forces to the affairs of daily
life. As the study of Euclid trains the mind in the abstract,
so the study of music trains the emotions in the abstract.
If you want to touch and train this emotional life, music is
your all-powerful ally.
The time is not distant when this great truth will be
understood and practised in connection with our toiling
masses our artisans, our poor, our labourers, our degraded
denizens of back streets, cellars, and foul alleys. There
are millions whose only use of the emotional life ia base,
208 HEARING MUSIC.
undisciplined, and degraded. Pleasure with many means
crime restraint, the real hand-maid of pleasure, is un-
known ; system, order, harmony in their feelings, habits of
self-control, checking the impulses, moderating and econo-
mizing the feelings, guiding them to powerful purposes and
wise ends and wholesome joys of all this our masses are
chiefly ignorant ; yet if what I have maintained be true, all
this music would mightily help to teach and to give.
I have known the oratorio of the Messiah draw the lowest
dregs of Whitechapel into a church to hear it, and during
ir . the performance sobs have broken forth from
EFFECT OF THE the silent and attentive throng. Will anyone
"MESSIAH"
ON THE say that for these people to have their feelings
for once put through such a noble and long-
sustained exercise as that, could be otherwise than bene-
ficial? If such performances of both sacred and secular
music were more frequent, we should have less drunkenness,
less wife-beating, less spending of summer gains, less pauper-
ism in winter. People get drunk because they have nothing
else to do ; they beat their wives because their minds are
narrow, their tastes brutal, their emotions, in a word, ill-
regulated; they spend their wages because they have no self-
control, and dawdle in public-houses, where money must be
spent, simply in the absence of all other resources ; and they
starve in winter because they have not acquired the habit
of steady work, which is impossible without steady and
GIVE THE PEOPLE MUSIC. 209
wholesome recreation, or that steady thrift and self-control
which is impossible apart from disciplined emotion.
The question of music for the people will some day become
a great government question. A few thousands spent on
promoting bands, cheap and good, accessible and respectable,
would save the country millions in poor-rates. I do not say
that mnsic will ever shut up all our prisons and workhouses,
but I venture to believe that as a chief and sovereign means
of rousing, satisfying, and recreating the emotions, it would
go far to diminish the number of paupers and criminals.
It would help them to save, it would keep them from drink,
it would recreate them wholesomely, and teach them to
govern their feelings to use, and not invariably abuse, their
emotions.
One Saturday afternoon 1 stood outside a public house,
and saw the groups of men standing round the door. Those
156. that came to the door did not enter ; those who
PEOP B came f ort h ^ tn lighted pipes, paused ; a slat-
MUSIC. ternly girl or two, with a ragged child in her
arms ; a wife who had followed her husband to look after
the Saturday wages, which were going straight to the
gin-shop ; a costermonger with his cart drew up ; the idle
cabmen came across the road; even a few dirty, stone-
throwing, dog- worrying boys ceased their sport; and two
or three milliners' " Hands " stood still. And what was it
all about ? I blush for my country ! A wretched cornet
14
210 HEARING MUSIC.
with a harp, no two strings of which were in tune, the
harpist trying wildly to follow " The last rose of summer "
with but two chords, and always in with the wrong one.
The weather was bitterly cold : the men's hands were in
their pockets, the girls shivered, but they were all taking
their solace. This was the best music they could get : it
seemed to soothe and refresh them. Oh, that I could have
led those people to some near winter pavilion, or even a cold
garden, where they could have walked about and heard
a popular selection of tunes, an overture, anything, by
a common but excellent German band. What good that
would have done them ! How they would have enjoyed it !
And supposing that every Saturday they could look forward
to it, admission twopence apiece, the men would be there
with their wives and children ; they would spend less on the
whole family than they would have squandered on themselves
in one drunken afternoon. They could meet their friends,
have their chat and glass of ale, or cup of coffee, in the
winter garden ; they would go home sober ; and being
satisfied, recreated, having had their exercise and company,
would be more likely to go to bed early than to get drunk
late. Surely all this is better than boozing in public-houses.
Oh ! what a vast, what a beneficent future has music in
the time to come ! Let its true power and use be once
understood; let some one man who loves the people, and is
willing to consult their tastes without pandering to them,
open a promenade for the lower stratum of the population,
GIVE THE PEOPLE MUSIQ. 211
at a low price, on Saturday afternoon, and let us see the
result. Let the musical part be under some fit and
intelligent musical dictator, and let some able and sympa-
thetic administrator, intimately and wisely in sympathy with
(he masses a Miss OCTAVIA HILL organize the refresh-
ments, the admissions by payment, the general distribution
of tickets, passes, advertisements, accommodation, &c. Let
this be tried fairly at first, of course, with an outlay of
charitable funds and then I prophesy four things :
1. It will soon be self-supporting.
2. It will have a definite and marked influence upon tho
crime and intemperance of the district.
3. It will promote thrift, and increase the sum, now
lamentably small, of the people's wholesome pleasures.
4. It will become a national institution, and spread in
a short time throughout the length and breadth of the
land.
Then shall music, ceasing to be the luxury of the rich and
the degradation of the poor, open the golden gates of a wider
and a happier realm of recreation for the masses. In its
wake might follow, under similar management, a regene-
rated and popular drama, pictorial exhibitions, short and
systematic lectures to groups in separate alcoves, electrical
experiments, the microscope, the telescope, and a thousand
other elevating and instructive seances to each seance one
halfpenny apiece extra, or one penny to frank for the
whole,
14 *
212 HEARING MUSIC.
Once get the people together by the power of music, you
can mould them j one closed chamber of their minds after
another might be unlocked ; and were the scheme
157- conducted with ability, and carefully watched, we
TIIE KEY.
should soon hail the dawn of a new era of popular
enlightenment and genial instruction combined with an
almost boundless variety of accessible, innocent, and elevating
enjoyment.
CEEMON A
ISoofu
CREMONA,
i.
INTERLUDE
ON A NIGHT AT THE KOYAL INSTITUTION.
158.
MT VIOLIN.
T would be strange if 1 had not a good deal to say
about the violin. The toy of my childhood the
solace of my manhood what it will be to my
old age, should I ever come to that, I cannot
say. It can never be less than a happy memory,
and in the hands of others for I cannot suppose I shall
ever take it up again a recurrent delight.
The second time I was invited to fill the position of
Friday evening lecturer at the Royal Institution, in
February 1880, I took for my subject, "Old Violins/''
216 ON A NIGHT AT THE EOTAL INSTITUTION.
I had not thought much about the violin for several years,
but this sudden return to my old love re-
159.
LATENT kindled my enthusiasm. Numberless fragments
KNOWLEDGE. of yiolia lore that j knew w i t i lou t having
learned, facts that I supposed were familiar to everyone, but
which I found few even suspected; views which seemed to
me obvious, but which to others appeared fanciful, seemed to
crowd upon my mind, and my great difficulty was to know
what to select, not how many, but how few things I could
say in my hour.
I had noticed that very great men at the Royal Institu-
tion floundered about for half-an-hour over an introduction,
laboured under a fatal incapacity to begin, and
GOOD only towards the end of the hour, when it was
time to leave off, really got under weigh. I
think it was MR. B RAM WELL (since knighted), the engineer,
next whom I happened to sit at dinner one night, who
said to me, " If you lecture at the Royal Institution,
don't beat about the bush, begin at once." I planned my
lecture for three quarters of an hour, giving myself the odd
quarter for illustration and digression. First quarter, the
Construction; second quarter, the History; third quarter,
the Sound of the violin. I allowed my mind to brood over
each division, and made fragmentary notes on occasion.
I did not so much want to acquire information as to arrange
what I knew give it point, edge, and a setting.
PREPARATION FOR THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 217
I went down and had a chat with MR. HILL, of Wardour
Street, who always seemed to me quite one of the old fiddle-
.. makers redivivus. The sources of violin History
PREPARATION are open to everyone in VIDAL, FETIS, HART,
EOYAL ENGEL, &c. I had used up some of these in my
' section on violins in Music and Morals, and as
regards the Sound I thought I could rely on my own per-
ception and experience. For two months before my lecture
I lived much with great fiddles, and I had my own Cremona
always with me, MR. AMHERST'S very tender and delightful
Nicolas Amati, as well as his venerable Gaspar violin, and
MR. ENTHOVEN'S famous Maggini. I took these down to
the Isle of Wight, got them into condition, played upon
them every day, compared them, handled them, thought
about them. They kept me in the violin atmosphere, above
all they kept my eye in. If you leave off looking at violins
you soon get out of practice, you fail to see the subtle
differences, you get like a tea-taster off his palate. To
know fiddles and judge them you must be always looking at
them. For a time, at least, I got my eye in by dwelling on
the best models. I lost no opportunity of seeing great
fiddles for the next two months; the DUKE OF EDINBURGH
showed me his ; MR. ADAM showed me his, and allowed me
to see and handle the Dolphin Strad. I carefully avoided
looking at any inferior violin, so that my eye might be
saturated with nothing but the curves and peculiarities of
the great makers.
218 ON A NIGHT AT THE EOYAL INSTITUTION.
The collection with which I was able to decorate the
semicircular table of the Royal Institution on the night
of my lecture, was, I should think, as a collec-
1C2
A RARE tion, unique. I had about twenty of the finest
N ' fiddles in the world, representing the chief makers
from DUIFFOPRUGCAR to BERGONZI, arranged in front of me.
The DUKE OF LEIXSTER'S colossal Gaspar bass, now in the
South Kensington Museum, lay on the floor between me
and the audience. Various fantastic viols lent me by the
South Kensington stood on the right and left of me, and
behind me was a yellow screen on which I inscribed, with
a piece of coarse charcoal, the ground plan of the great
square in Cremona, showing the houses of STRADIVARIUS, the
GUARNERII, and AMATI, all close to one another. Another
screen behind me reached the whole length of the theatre
facing the audience, and represented the violin tribe and old
viols great and small. A long roll diagram with the names
and dates of the chief violin makers of Italy, France, and
Germany ran at the top from end to end of the wall.
The theatre was crowded. I touched from time to time
a few of the instruments to illustrate peculiarities of tone.
The exquisite sweetness and freshness of the
Dolphin " Strad." excited most admiration, and
PACKING DP.
at the close of the lecture people crowded to
the table to see, and, if possible, handle my gems. I dared
not leave my post ; my object was to get all the fiddles
PACKING UP. 219
into their cases rapidly to allow them to be handled was
no part of my programme, nor had I any permission for
this from their owners. Before ever my curious hearers
could get at the table, the Dolphin " Strad." had left the
theatre, and the DUKE OF EDINBURGH'S violins, one of
which belonged to the EMPEROR OF BUSSIA, were both in
their cases.
For a few precious days I had the guardianship of most
of these gems. It was an anxious time. Some I kept in
my bedroom, others in my study adjoining it, with locked
doors ; and even then I awoke several times each night,
fancying something was wrong, and once, to satisfy rny-
self, I got up about three o'clock in the morning and went
to look at them in their cases. They were all resting
quietly, more quietly than I could rest. When all the
instruments were safe back in the hands of their respective
owners, after the first pang at parting, I heaved a deep
sigh of relief. The Times printed a short summary of
the lecture, but I wrote it out afterwards at length for
Good Words and I here give it in extenso substantially
as it was delivered.
220 OLD VIOLINS.
II.
OLD VIOLINS.
THE Construction, the History, the Sound of the violin,
would make a romantic work in three volumes as sensa-
tional as, and far more instructive than, most
novels. The very pine-wood smells good, to
THE WOOD.
begin with. The forests of the Southern Tyrol,
which now teem with saplings, when the old violins were
made, from 1520 to 1750, still abounded in those ancient
trees, so eagerly and often vainly sought out by modern
builders, and which the old viol-makers found to possess
the finest acoustic properties.
The mighty timbers were felled in late summer. They
came in loose floating rafts from the banks of the Garda ;
they floated down the Mincio to Mantua. Brescia was iu
the midst of them. From Como they found their way to
Milan, and from Lake Maggiore direct, via the Ticino and
the Po, to Cremona.
What market days were those ! What a timber feast
to select from ; and what cunning lovers and testers of
wood were the old viol-makers, the fathers of the violin !
The rough heaps of pine, pear, lemon, and ash, beloved of
the Brescians of maple and sycamore, preferred by the
Cremonese lay steaming dry and hard in a few hours
beneath the sun of the southern Alps.
THE WOOD. HOW TO SELECT IT. 221
Before a beam was bought, the master passed his hand
over the surface. He could tell by touch the density of its
fibre. Then he would take two equal slips of
166.
now TO deal and weigh them, and judge of their porous-
ness. The very appearance of the wood would
guide him to its probable vibrational powers. Then he
would, perchance, before leaving the market, cut strips
of equal length, and elicit their relative intensities by
striking their tongues. He would often select for a definite
purpose, looking for a soft, porous piece, or a specially
hard and close-fibred grain a certain appearance he would
instinctively associate with rare acoustic properties. The
seller would be eager to find the pieces, useless to other
customers, invaluable to an ANDREAS AMATI, for he was sure
that the viol-maker would buy what suited him at a long
price. After the lapse of nearly two centuries, we can trace
such favourite beams by peculiar stains, freckles, and grain-
ings. When, after cutting up a dozen trees, once in two or
three years a piece of fine acoustic wood was found, it was
kept for the master's best work. The same pine-beam will
crop up in the bellies of Stradiv-arius at an interval of
years. Another can be traced in the violins of JOSEPH
GUAIINEBIUS, and after his death CARLO BERGONZI got hold
cf the remnants of it, and we detect it by a certain stain
in the fibre.
The anxiety to retain every particle of a precious piece
222 OLD VIOLINS.
of wood is seen in the subtle and delicate patching and
repatching of backs and bellies. The seams are
166.
RARE only discoverable by a microscope, so perfect is
PROPERTIES. the cabinet work How d iff erent from the
modern maker at Madrid, whom TARISIO relates as having
to repair a damaged Stradivarius, and, finding the belly
cracked, sent it home with a brand new one of his own
manufacture !
The properties of fine violin wood are very mysterious.
Only to be surrounded by a selection of fine violins is an
experience which cannot be forgotten. Sit in the room,
with them with your eyes shut, and, although you may
not touch one of them, you will soon be aware of ghostly
presences.
When I was preparing this Royal Institution lecture, I
sat alone in my study the night before, surrounded by
that matchless collection of instruments which it
167.
A RARE was my good fortune to exhibit the next evening
N ' in Albemarle Street, and the chief features of
which I desire here to place on record. Such a series of
types, from 1520 to 1740, has seldom been seen together.
The violins weighed but a few ounces apiece, and were
worth thousands of pounds in value. My doors were locked ;
no one but myself had access to that treasure house ; the
room was kept to an even temperature night and day, and
011 the floor in along row, placed chronologically., lay these
A BARE COLLECTION. 223
mystic arrangements in pine and sycamore, which were
known to imprison the true souls of Brescia and Cremona.
First a Duiffoprugcar of fabulous antiquity, about 1530,
lent by MB. HILL ; a Gaspar di Salo tenor of old Brescia,
lent by MR. HART; a Maggini, DE BERIOT'S favourite maker
(also Brescia), lent by MR. ENTHOVEN; an Andreas Guar-
nerius (my own) ; Nicolas Amati (Cremona), MR. TYSSEN
AMHERST, M.P. ; a violin of the Steiner (German) school,
CAPTAIN CHAMPION; a Stradivarius, the property of the
late EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. of Russia, lent me by His
Royal Highness the DUKE OP EDINBURGH ; another fine
Stradivarius, also lent me by His Royal Highness; a fine
Joseph Guarnerius (Cremona), lent by MR. HART ; my own
labelled Stradivarius, formerly the property of COLONEL
NEWBERRY ; a magnificent Venetian violoncello, a Montag-
nana in exquisite condition; a noble Gaspar double-bass,
found in the bedroom of the late TARISIO, along with his
dead body and the Messie violin and other priceless gems.
On the following night, the South Kensington added to
my store DRAGONETTI'S monster double-bass, some exquisite
ancient viols of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
MR. ADAMS lent me the Dolphin Stradivarius for which he
gave 600.
In the silence of the night the room seemed full of whis-
pers and hollow rustlings. I could not cough or move
without these ghostly voices answering me, as from the
catacombs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even.
224 OLD VIOLINS.
the old seasoned backs and bellies of unstrung violins are
full of the strangest echoes, and MR. HILL, the violin-maker^
tells me that as he sits in his work-room, where old violin
carcases are piled in hundreds on shelves and cupboards
pell-mell, ribs, bellies, and backs, he constantly hears them
muttering and humming to themselves, in answer to his
tools, the stroke of his hamm2r, the sound of his voice.
Let us now look at the violin anatomically. It is a
miracle of construction, and as it can be taken to pieces, put
together, patched, and indefinitely repaired, it is
168.
VIOLIN almost indestructible. It is, as one may say, as
light as a feather and as strong as a horse. It is
composed of fifty-eight or seventy pieces of wood. Wood
about as thick as a half-crown, by exquisite adjustments
of parts and distribution of strain, resists for several centuries
an enormous pressure. The Belly of soft deal, the Back of
hard sycamore, are united by six sycamore ribs, supported
by twelve blocks with linings.
It appears that the quick vibrations of the hard wood,
married to the slower sound-waves of the soft, produce the
mellow but reedy timbre of the good violin. If all the wood
were hard, you would get the tone light and metallic ; if all
soft, it would be muffled and tubby.
There is every conceivable variety of fibre both in hard and
soft wood. The thickness of back and belly is not uniform;
each should be thicker towards the middle. But how thick,
THE SOUND BAR. 225
and shaved thin in what proportions towards the sides ?
The cunning workman alone knows. As a rule, if the
wood be hard he will cut it thin; if soft, thick; but
how thin and how thick, and exactly where, is nowhere
writ down, nor can be, because nowhere for handy refer-
ence are recorded the densities of all pine and pear and
sycamore and maple planks that have or shall come into
the maker's hands.
The Sound-bar is a strip of pine wood running
obliquely under the left foot of the bridge. It not only
strengthens the belly for the prodigious pressure
J.UJ*
THE of the four strings, whose direction it is made
** to follow, for vibrational reasons, but it is the
nervous system of the violin. It has to be cut and adjusted
to the whole framework; a slight mistake in position, a
looseness, an inequality or roughness of finish, will produce
that hollow teeth-on-edge growl called the "wolf."
It takes the greatest cunning and a life of practical
study to know how long, how thick, and exactly where
the sound-bar should be in each instrument. The health
and morale of many an old violin has been impaired by
its nervous system being ignorantly tampered with. Every
old violin, with the exception of the " Pucelle/' has had
its sound-bar replaced, or it would never have endured
the increased tightness of strings brought in with our
modern pitch. Many good forgeries have thus been
15
226 OLD VIOLINS.
exposed, for in taking the reputed Stradivarius to pieces,
the rough clumsy work inside, contrasting with the ex-
quisite finish of the old masters, betrays at once the
coarseness of a body that never really held the soul of
a Cremona.
The Sound-post, a little pine prop like a short bit of
cedar pencil, is the soul of the violin. It is placed up-
right inside, about one-eighth of an inch to the
TOE back of the right foot of the bridge, and through
' T ' it pass all the heart-throbs or vibrations gene-
rated between the back and the belly. There the short
waves and the long waves meet and mingle. It is the
material throbbing centre of that pulsating air column,
defined by the walls of the violin, but propagating those
mystic sound-waves that ripple forth in sweetness upon
ten thousand ears.
Days and weeks may be spent on- the adjustment of this
tiny sound-post. Its position exhausts the patience of the
repairer, and makes the joy or the misery of the player.
As a rough general rule, the high-built violin will take it
nearer the bridge than the low-built, and a few experiments
will at once show the relation of the " soul " to tightness,
mellowness, or intensity of sound. For the amateur there
is but one motto, " Leave well alone."
The prodigious strain of the strings is resisted first by the
STRAIN OF SPKINGS 'AND NECK. 227
arcli of the belly ; then by the ribs, strengthened with the
171. upright blocks, the pressure amongst which is
!! A * evenly distributed by the linings which unite
bl.KI.NU- 3 A>D * *-*
NECK. them ; and, lastly, by the supporting sound-bar,
sound-post, and back* Many people, on observing the
obvious join between the n^ck and the head of old violins,
fancy that the head is not the original. It as the neck that
is new. All the necks of old violins have thus been
lengthened, and the old heads refixed, for the simple reason
that CORELLI'S finger-board will not" do for PAGANINI, and
mightier execution requires an ampler field for its eccentric
excursions.
The Scroll, or head, fitted with its four simple screws of
ebony, box, or rosewood, is the physiognomy of the violin.
At first all fiddle-heads look alike as do all
pug-dogs, or all negroes, and, indeed, England.
THE SCROLL. r
Wales, Italy, Holland, and most other countries
have their general faces, so have violins, but a practised
eye sees the difference at a glance. Look for half-an-hour
every day at a late Joseph Guarnerius, an early Nicolas
Amati, and a grand pattern Strad., and you will be surprised
that you could ever have confounded their forms. What is
called the " throwing " of the scroll betrays the master's
style like handwriting, and he lays down his type in every
curve, groove, and outline. A keen eye can almost see the
favourite tool he worked with, and how his hand went.
15 *
228 OLD VIOLINS.
These subtleties are like the painter's "touch," they can
hardly be imitated so as to deceive one who has mastered
the individual work of the great makers.
The ebony finger-board must be nicely fitted, as also the
neck, to the hand of the player, on its even smoothness and
true curve depends the correct stopping of the
TIIE FINGER- notes. You cannot, for instance, stop fifths in
KD ' tune on a rough or uneven finger-board. The
button to which the tail-piece is fastened is full of style,
and not, like the pegs, a thing to be dropped and changed
at will ; it is a critical part of the violin, takes a good third
of the leverage of the whole strain, is fixed like a vice,
rooted in the very adamant of the wood, carefully finished,
and cut round, pointed, or flat, according to the taste of
the maker.
The Purfling, more or less deeply embedded, emphasizes
the outline of the violin. It is composed of three thin
strips of wood, ebony, sometimes whalebone, the
J. i ^.
THE centre of two white strips; it is often more or
' less embedded, and betrays the workman's taste
and skill. The double purfling and purfling in eccentric
patterns of some of the old violins is very quaint, but a
doubtful adjunct to the tone. But, strange to say, prior to
1600, appearances were more thought of than tone. The
old guitars and viols are often so profusely carved or inlaid
THE VARNISH. 229
with tortoiseshell, ivory, and silver, that they have but little
sound, and that bad. I do not think that this has ever
been noticed before, but it is undoubtedly a fact that atten-
tion to tone only dates from the rise of the violin proper
in the sixteenth century, and is, in fact, coincident with
the rise of the art of modern music.
I come now to the Cremona varnish. What is it ? About
1760 it disappeared, and never reappeared. All the Cre-
monas have it. Was it a gum or an oil, or a
distillation from some plant, or some chemical
THE VAKNISD.
once largely in use and superseded, as the old
oil lamps have gone out before gas and paraffine? How
was it mixed ? Is the recipe lost ? No one seems to be
able to answer these questions definitely. There it lies
like sunlit water, mellow, soft, rich ; varying in colour
golden, orange, or pale red tint on the Guarnerius !
rich gold, deep orange, or light red on the Stradivarius
back and when it rubs softly away rather than chips off
hardly, like the German and French imitations, it leaves
the wood seasoned, impregnated, and fit to resist heat, cold,
and the all-destroying worm for ages. MR. CHARLES
READS gives one account of the matter. He thinks the
wood, cut in winter, varnished in the hot summer months,
was first bathed several times in oil; thus, he says,
were the " pores of the wood filled, and the grain shown
up." The oil held in solution some clear gum. "Then
230 OLD VIOLINS.
upon this oil varnish, when dry, was laid some heterogeneous
varnish, namely a solution in spirit of some sovereign, high-
coloured, pellucid, and, above all, tender gum." These gums
were reddish yellow and yellowish red, and are accredited
with colouring the varnish. On the other hand, it must be
stated that, although the difficulties in the amber theory are
great, Mr. PERKINS, the eminent chemist, has discovered
amber in the varnish of JOSEPH GUARNERIUS, and he believes
the colouring to be derived from a herb common through-
out Piedmont, and, following out his conviction, MR.
PERKINS has made a varnish which certainly does resemble
very closely the Cremonese hue and gloss. DOD, who died
in 1830, professed to have got the Cremona recipe, and
whilst employing JOHN LOTT and BERNARD FENDT to make
his violins, always varnished them himself; and, indeed, his
varnish is very superior, and his violins are highly prized ;
but perhaps in a general description like this to discuss
further the varnish theory would be superfluous.
The Bridge of the violin is to many a true Asses' Bridge ;
you may try and try again, and its true position will still
be represented by an unknown x. It is but
1 a small piece of hard boxwood, 2 inches by
THE BRIDGE.
1^ in size, it is quaintly perforated, it clings
closely to the violin's belly with its two little thin feet,
is about as thick, where thickest, as a five-shilling piece,
thinning steadily towards the top, which obeys the curve
THE SENTIMENT OF THE BRIDGE. 231
of the finger-board and lifts the strain of the four strings.
The bridge is movable ; but it is so important and all-
essential to the propagation of any sound at all, that it
may be called the wife of the violin. All old violins have
had many bridges in their time, but there is no reason
why the union, if happy, should not last for forty or fifty
years. A perfectly harmonious marriage is as rare between
violins and their bridges as it is between men and women,
though in either case there is a considerable margin for the
gradual adjustment of temperaments. Although the old
violin is very capricious in his choice, and often remains a
widow r er for years, he does not object to elderly bridges, and
when he finds one he can get on with, will obstinately resent
any rash interference with the harmony of his domestic
arrangements.
This is a point not nearly enough considered even by
wise violin doctors and repairers. The heartless substitu-
177. tion of raw young bridges for old and tried
THE SENTI- companions is common and much to be deplored,
MENT OF THE
BIUDGE. an( j a sensitive old Strad. will never cease to
spar with the fresh, conceited, wayward young things,
utterly incapable of entering into his fine qualities, and
caring naught for his two hundred years of tonal experi-
ence ; and the jarring and bickering go on until he gets rid
of one after another and settles down, if not with his old
favourite, at least with some elderly and fairly dcssicateu
232 OLD VIOLINS.
companion. I do not believe in bridges being worn out.
After a year or two the hard box-fibre yields very little
under the cutting of the strings; there is a considerable
margin for the shifting of the strings, and no string but the
first will materially grind. Rather than change so precious
a thing as a congenial partner, glue, mend, patch, repair her,
just as you would her priceless old husband ; if he is in the
prime of life at about one hundred and fifty, she may well
be a little made up at sixty or seventy. Thirty years ago
my Stradivarius, 1712, grand pattern, came by gift into
my possession. I soon found it did not get on with its
bridge a new, sappy, crude, thick thing, which seemed
to choke and turn sour its mellow vibrations. About that
time I received the present of a very old bridge from the
violin of F. CRAMER. It was delicate, exquisitely finished,
evidently very old. I thought its build too slight, but clapped
it on at once, and the old violin waked as out of a long sleep,
like a giant refreshed with wine. It was then some time
before I found exactly the right place, and for several years,
on and off, I fidgeted about with the bridge. One day, iu
shifting it, I snapped it ; but after trying other bridges, I
glued the old one together, and once more the violin found
its old sweetness and solace. Years passed, I left off playing,
the Strad. lay neglected, got damp, and its joints loosened.
I lent it to a cunning doctor; he "fixed it up" again, but
sent it back with a new bridge, and sounding well, like files
and vinegar ! I recovered the old bridge that he declared
VIOLIN STRINGS. 233
now worn out. I restored it to its beloved husband, now
only in his one hundred arid seventy-first year, he received
his lost wife with effusion, and I think the harmony made
by the two was never more perfect than it is now. Truly
amantium not ir<B } but separatio amoris integratio est.
A -word about violin strings. The positive thickness of
the strings depends upon the temperament and build o
the violin, providing that the player's fingers are
178.
VIOLIN equal to thick or thin strings. Thick strings
will mellow the screaminess of a Stainer
elicit the full tone of a Joseph Guarnerius or grand Strad.,
whilst the older violins of Brescia, and even the sweet
Nicolas Amati, will work better with thinner strings;
but in such matters the player must come to the best
compromise he can with his fingers and his fiddle, for
the finger will often desire a thin string when the fiddle cries
out for a thick one. New violins as a rule will take thicker
strings than the fine old sensitives of the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries. Of the English, French, German,
and Italian strings, the Italian are the best ; and of the
Italian, the Roman hard and brilliant, a little rough, and
Neapolitan smooth, soft, and pale are preferred. Paduans
are strong, but frequently false. Veronese are softer and
deeper in colour. The Germans now rank next, and the
white smooth Saxon strings are good substitutes for, but no
rivals of, the Italians. The French firsts are brittle, the
234 OLD VIOLINS.
Italian strings sound well, and the French patent fourth
silver string, perfectly smooth and shining, is preferred by
some soloists to the old covered fourth. The English strings,
of a dirty green and yellow colour, are very strong, and good
enough for hack work in the orchestra. The best and
strongest strings are made from the intestines of spring
lambs killed in September, and the superiority of the Italian
over others is explained by the climate, for in Italy the sun
does what has to be done artificially in more northern
latitudes.
The demand for the interior of the September lamb
179. being out of all proportion to the supply, there
now TO - s a vas j. sa i e o f i n er i or strings always going on
STRINGS. a t high prices. In string selection the objects
are three:
1. To suit the constitution of your instrument, and
choose that thickness and quality of string which will
develop tone Avith the greatest ease, roundness, and
freedom.
2. To choose strings which will give good fifths a matter
sometimes a little dependent on the shape of your own
fingers and the cut of your finger-board, but also controlled
by the relative thickness of your strings.
3. To avoid false strings an epidemic which rages in-
continently amongst E violin strings SPOHR'S recipe for
detection was to hold the string between the fingers and
VIOLIN FASCINATION. 235
thumbs, and if when he set it vibrating from one end to the
other only two lines appeared, he decided that it was true ; if
a third, it was deemed false. Once on, however, there can
never be any doubt.
It is only necessary to glance at the enormous variety
of shapes that the viol tribe has assumed, both before
and after the creation of the violin, to judge
180.
VIOLIN of the inexhaustible dominion which the con-
FASCINATION. ,. , j .1 1
ception seems to have exercised over the human
mind. The collector who cannot play, and the player who
cannot collect, are alike victims of this mania for violins.
Of what interest can they be to the collector, who keeps
dozens of them, unstrung and unmended, in cupboards and
cabinets, and shows them about to his bewildered guests
like old pots or enamels ?
Look at a fine specimen or two, on and off, when you
have the chance, and the mystery may possibly dawn upon
you too.
There, in a small compass, lies before you such a wonder
of simplicity, subtlety, variety, and strength as perhaps no
other object of equal dimensions can possess. The eye is
arrested by the amber gloss and glow of the varnish ; the
infinite grace of the multitudinous curves; the surface, which
is nowhere flat, but ever in flowing lines, sunlit hollows of
miniature hills and vales, irregular, like the fine surface of a
perfectly healthy human body; its gentle mounds and
236 OLD VIOLINS.
depressions would almost make us believe that there is a
whole underlying system of muscle a very living organism,
to account for such subtle yet harmonious irregularity of
surface. It is positively alive with swelling and undulating
grace.
Then the eye follows with unabating ardour the outline
dipping in here or bulging there in segments of what look
like an oval or a circle, but which are never any part of an
oval or a circle but something drawn unmechanically like a
Greek frieze after the vision of an inward grace.
Its voice may be as fair as its form and finish ; yet un-
strung and silent, more truly can it be said of a violin than
of any human creature, that " it is a thing of beauty and a
joy for ever/' for its beauty grows with the mellowness of
age ; its voice is sweeter as the centuries roll on, and its
physical frame appears to be almost indestructible.
And the player who is not always a judge of a genuine
violin, but goes by the sound qualities which suit him he
naturally adores what is, within its limits, scientifically the
most perfect of all instruments.
The four strings, of course, limit and define its harmonic
resources in combination and viewed collectively in the
quartet alone is it able to compass the extended develop-
ments of harmony in bass, tenor, and treble clef, but as a
tone-producing instrument it has no rival. It possesses
accent combined with sustained and modified tone. The
piano has accent, but little sustained and no modified tone ;
VIOLIN HISTORY. 237
the organ has accent, and sustained, but in a very imperfect
sense, modified tone ; the violin possesses in perfection all
three. With the stroke of the bow comes every degree of
accent ; with the drawing and skilful sostenuto of up and
down bowings the notes are indefinitely sustained to a degree
far exceeding the capacity of the human lungs ; whilst every
pulse of emotion is through the pressure of the finger
communicated to the vibrating string, and the tone trembles,
shivers, thrills, or assumes a hard, rigid quality, passing at
will from the variety of a whisper to a very roar or scream
of agony or delight.
Can the soul of the musician fail to yield loving or utter
allegiance to the sovereign power of the violin, which is so
willing and ideal a minister of his subtlest inspirations equal
to the human voice in sensibility and expression, and far
superior to it in compass, execution, variety, and durability ?
The violin is not an invention, it is a growth. It is the
survival of the fittest. The undeveloped elements of the
genus Viol, out of which grew the species Violin,
181.
VIOLIN are to be found latent in the rebek, the crowth,
and the rotta. In the struggle for existence
each succumbed, leaving only its useful and vital elements
to be recombined.
The rebek bequeathed its rounded form pierced in the
belly with two sound-holes, the bridge, tail-piece, screw-
box, doubtless a sound-post, and that odd crook of a violin-
238 OLD VIOLINS.
bow often seen in the hands of stone angels in cathedrals of
the fourteenth century.
The crowth gives the all-important hint of the two vibrat-
ing boards joined by ribs; whilst from the rotta, or guitar
tribe, comes the lower end, and the upper end comes from
the rebek the elongated neck separate from the body, the
frets, which for one hundred and fifty years delayed the
advent of the violin, and the two concave side-curves so
needful for the manipulation of the bow. Music and Morals
contains diagrams illustrating the genesis of the violin.
This Viol of no particular size or settled shape, or
rather of all shapes and sizes, usually with a flat back and
round belly was made in great profusion in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Anyone who will glance at the
case of ancient viols in the South Kensington Museum will
be surprised at the fancy and fertility of form displayed.
There was the Knee Viol, the Bass Viol, the Viol di
Gamba, the Violone, and the Viol d'Amore. Some of these
182. were inlaid with tortoisesheli and ivory, others
ELizA ^ TnAN eloborately carved and over-purfled facts most
VIOLIN, interesting to the connoisseur, and marking a
period when cabinet-work was at its zenith and musical
sound in its infancy. Sound was the carver's humble
servant. The well-known violin given by QUEEN ELIZABETH
to the EARL OF LEICESTER, riddled through and through
like Ceylonese furniture or a Chinese ivory junk, is quite
THE NUMBER OF STRINGS 239
absurd as a sound vehicle. 13 y and by the carver and fine
cabinet-worker would have to place all the treasures of their
art at the disposal of music, and would not be allowed one
join, or purfle, or pattern inimical to tone. I shall develop
these hints later.
The variety and number of strings in these old Viols is
often childish. It looks like (what it was) playing with
newly-discovered resources the real wealth of
183.
THE KCMBEE which it took two hundred years more to learn.
s ' If in bowed instruments you have more strings
than fingers the hand with difficulty overlays them of
course in the guitar tribe the work is divided between ten
fingers instead of four. In the Viol d' Am ore an odd
attempt was made to improve the timbre by a set of steel
wires tuned sympathetically, and running beneath the gut
strings. It took two hundred years to convince people that
the timbre lay with the wood, not the wires; nor could the
old masters see that tone would only arrive with an extended
study in the properties of wood and a radical change of model.
I showed some years ago in the Contemporary Review
what it is difficult to trace step by step, but what we know
must have been the history of the violin tribe
184
VIOLIN in its earlier stages. I placed the lesson for
EVOLUTION. .-, i 1 .-i 11
the eye showing how the smaller viois or
violettes of the seventeenth century fell into the violins,
240 OLD VIOLINS.
the larger ones into the Tenor, and the Viol di Gambas
into the Violoncello. The double-bass, a genuine Viol,
and the only one which retains its flat back, was made
extensively by GASPAR DI SALO, and has been entirely
adopted by the modern orchestra; indeed -whilst innumerable
other large viols are merely preserved as curiosities, the
double-bass retains its ancient type, and in the BEETHOVEN
and WAGNERIAN orchestra exercises an influence and promi-
nence second only to the violin itself.
As we look intently at the confused nebula? of sixteenth-
century viols, we notice the modest constellation of the
violins slowly detaching itself from that host of tubby stars
which it was soon destined to supersede for ever. The
rise of the violin tribe by which of course I mean
the violin, tenor, violoncello, and double bass is, in fact,
coincident with the rise of modern music. A definite art
required a definite instrument more mechanical, more
constant, more reliable than the human voice.
Between CARISSIMI, 1570, and MONTEVEIIDE, 1672, the
foundations of the art of modern music were laid by the
185. discovery of the perfect cadence and the modern
* V B octave. With a system of fixed tonality the
AND THE *
VIOLIN. ar t began those strides of progress which in
about two hundred years seemed to leave nothing new to
be discovered. It first recast and used the human voice.
The voice was noticed to fall naturally into treble, alto,
TRANSFORMATION. 241
tenor, and bass, and was so organized in the singing schools
of PISTOCCHI at Bolona in 1659.
the chief of the AMATI worked from 1598-1684,
and the division of violin, viola, violoncello and double-bass
corresponded with tolerable closeness to the four
TRANS- divisions of the human voice^ the rise of singing-
FOKMATION, -i i j ,1 /. ,-, i
schools, and the exigencies of the new musical
art. The Procrustean bed upon which the poor viols of
the period were now stretched forms one of the most
interesting and instructive episodes in the histpry of the
art. Viol di Gambas were converted into violoncellos,
the viollettes enlarged and patched into violins, viols cut
down sadly, brutally cut down into tenors. No lover
of the art could help dropping a tear over a match-
less specimen of LINARELLI in 1400-1500, exhibited at
South Kensington, which had been so cut down ; and I
could point to one or two viols now passing as Amati
tenors which have received similar treatment and strut in
borrowed plumes. The cabinet work is often so fine that
only an experienced eye with the aid of a microscope can
discern the joins and refittings beneath the new wash of
dirty-brown varnish habitually used to conceal the deed.
But all this only proves the imperative fitness of a new
combination. "We have at last arrived at the modern violin,
and the reason of its natural supremacy. Its right to
survive is clearly to be found in its perfect ministry to
16
242 OLD VIOLINS.
the art of modern music. I have dwelt upon its compass,
which is to all intents and purposes unlimited, and its other
especial merits are not far to seek.
The number and the tension of the strings is the happy
mean between the one or two strings of the Japanese or
Persian fiddle and the many-stringed viol. Add
187.
FOUR a fifth string to the violin and the tension is
not only too great, but unnecessary, for the E
string will yield sound as shrill as the human ear can bear;
add a string on the other side, and the tension will be too
feeble to yield a good quality of sound. And similar
remarks may apply to the tenor, violoncello, and double-
bass ; each is sufficient and complete, and where it ends its
companion steps in to continue the varied function.
Each is distinct and full of character ; the charm of
variety is constitutionally involved. In each the strings are
of different thicknesses, with different tensions, acting upon
different vibrating surfaces, enclosing different-sized columns
of air.
We pause for a moment with feelings of profound satis-
faction and survey the violin kingdom of the past. This
fourfold valuable selection this crowning of violin, tenor,
violoncello, and double-bass has not been the work of any
one man or age, or even country ; it is the inexorable,
empirical, yet logic-al outcome or evolution of thousands of
experiments made in France, Germany, and Italy, by
THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS, 1520-17 GO. 243
hundreds of workers, extending over centuries of time, and
resulting in the survival of the fittest.
Although DUIFFOPRUGCAR was certainly not an Italian,
yet, coming from the Tyrol, he settled at Bologna, after-
188. "wards migrating to Lyons, in France, where he
s P en * mos t f his life an( i died. He was un-
1520-17GO. doubtedly one of the fathers, if not the father.
DUIFFOPEUG-
CAB. of the violin. It has been questioned whether
DUIFFOPRUGCAR ever made violins, but there is no reason for
doubting that PALESTRINA played on a Duiffoprugcar violin,
which is said to have borne this couplet :
Viva fui in sylvis, sum dura occisa securi
Dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cauo.
There is, besides, a large-sized violin bearing date 1539, said
to be the only extant specimen; but lately, MR. HILL
obtained from Lyons a very excellent and perfect specimen,
which he believed to be an undoubted Duiffoprugcar, and
which I exhibited at the Royal Institution. It is quaint,
undecided, and antique in outline, the S's curiously cut, and
the back over-purfled. When opened it was found backed
with old canvas and oddly primitive in construction. It
ought to be put under a glass-case in the South Kensington
Museum. Indeed it is incredible, but true, that not a single
museum in Europe that I know of has thought it worth
while to procure specimens of the violin art from DUIFFO-
TRUGCAR to BERGONZI.
16 *
244 OLD VIOLINS.
But it is not to Bologna or Lyons, but to Brescia, that
we must look for the rise of the first great violin school.
Note first GASPAR DI SALO, who worked between 1550
and 1612. It has been my privilege to live for some
189. weeks with MR. AMIIERST'S fine old Gaspar
THE BRESCIAN
di Salo. He was in splendid condition, still
SCHOOL.
1520-1620. bulgy, but a notable and significant reduction
CASPAR DI
SALO. from the old viol type, which GASPAR doubtless
continued to make. The head is charmingly long and queer
and antique. The idea of putting character and great finish
into the scroll belongs to a later period. Human and
animal heads were no doubt common enough in the place of
a scroll ; but they belong to the carving, cabinet-decoration,
ovcr-purfling period, when tone was second to ornament.
As the great tone period approached, carving for the sake
of carving was abandoned ; ornament was kept simple,
subordinate, but full of finish and avowedly the
190.
VIOLIN mark of sign-manual. The exquisite, yet un-
N0 ' pretending and simple, scrolls of AMATI and
STRADIVARIUS arose along with the rise of violin tone. But
why such finish, such evident intention to be noticed, such
distinct cachet and appeal to the eye? I think this is the
natural explanation. As the art of violin-playing improved,
violinists took to holding their fiddles well up, and to
playing without notes; the head of the violin was thus
VIOLIN CARVING. 245
the first thing which caught the eye ; whereas before there
is every reason to believe that the old viol players held their
instruments down, like bad orchestral players now, with
violin scroll or head almost between their knees and unseen.
That head might, indeed, be a finely-carved human head ;
but, if so, it could only be seen as an ornament when the
violin was hanging up ; it could only be seen, if at all,
upside down when the violin was being played. Look at all
old violins; they are rubbed by the beard on both sides.
Now we never place the chin on the off-side always on the
in-side ; but if a man has to crouch in dim churches over
flickering oil lamps and scrape old chaunts, he will get
slovenly, his violin-head will droop between his knees, and
his chin will most naturally slip over the tail-piece and lie
on the off-side, whilst his ear reposes on the tail-piece, and
the top of his violin has a tendency to disappear over his
left shoulder !
Compare this old slovenly method inimical to tone, to
style, to execution, and to grace which buried the scroll
with the noble, upright pose of JOACHIM or NERUDA when
playing, where the scroll is constantly thrown up, as if itself
addressing the audience, and instead of looking upside-down
or ungraceful, as would a human or animal head in that
position, comes out towards you like the prow of an
ancient galley, and impresses upon the eye, with every
motion of the player's wrist, its fine verve and individual
character.
246 OLD VIOLINS.
GASPAR DI SALO may almost be said to have invented
violin tone. Mr. TYSSEN AMHERST'S unique early Gaspar
191. violin, with its long, pointed /-like black-letter
A FAMOUS sound-holes, although of the high model aban-
GASPAR
DESCRIBED, doned in later life, is surprising in tone, con-
sidering its build, which is generally supposed to favour
a smothered and tubby sound. Although the first and
fourth strings are rather rough, the whole is very sonorous
and fresh, and the D and A strings very rich and pure.
We must not look for the finish of the Amatis at this
early period. The build of this early Gaspar is round and
full, both in back and belly, and the chisel has gone wrong
more than once in the back grooving, whilst the purfling is
not good. Probably one and the same cunning workman
has repaired the purfling in places, patched the head, and
positively mosaiced the worn-out screw-box, and, alas !
carried a brown varnish over several parts of the instrument,
through which the rich golden tints of GASPAU still peep,
and almost dazzle the eye. Still, whoever has put on the
new neck has worshipped at the shrine of old GASPAR ; he
has made his purfling a little too good, left a little too much
of his glue and his brown varnish ; but his patched head is
such a masterpiece, such care and labour to keep every line
of CASPAR except on one side of the screw-box, where about
two inches of line is new but the join so good as only
to be seen under a microscope.
All this, when one lives with a fiddle, one gets to notice
THE CREMONA SCHOOL, 1550-1740. 247
and to love, whilst the uninitiated, standing by in bewilder-
ment, may well feel tempted to order the violin and the
connoisseur off to the nearest lunatic asylum.
MAGGINI (GIOVANNI PAOLO), 1590-1640, of Brescia, fol-
lowed GASPAR, but carried farther the art of rich, clear tone.
It is the glory of the Brescians to have hit upon
this secret, lost as soon as found, that for tone
G. F MAGGINI.
good round tone the belly and back must
be brought down flatter upon ribs of diminished height.
MAGGINI'S violins, though lacking in some of the quaint
grace of GASPAR (especially his double-basses), approach the
perfected Cremona model of the later rather than the earlier
days ; his scroll is grooved and finished ; his sound-holes are
still the long black-letter SS ; the varnish rich brown or
yellow. He is often confounded with BARAK NORMAN, or,
still worse, with any obscure German imitator who has
chosen to a little over-purfle and inlay his back. The
Brescians MARIANI, VENTURINI, BUDIANI, MATEO BENTE,
cannot further be alluded to here ; in time they will all be
treasured more as antiquities than as tone masters.
The hotter suns and splendid river supplying the fine
193. wood-market, and the commercial prosperity
THE CREMONA en i O y e ^ by Cremona, seem now to have attracted
SCHOOL. J J J
1550-1740 an d fixed the manufacture of the violin; and
there was now a growing demand, not only from all
218 OLD VIOLINS.
the churches but also throughout the palaces of Italy.
We must ever view that central square of Cremona, where
stood the Church of St. Dominic, with feelings of the
deepest interest. Standing opposite the fa9ade on our
right hand lies the house of the AMATI ; there worked
ANDREW, the founder of the school, making, in 1550, close
copies of the Brescians, GASPAR and MAGGINI.
There were the boys, ANTHONY and JEROME, who
afterwards made jointly those violins so much sought
after ; but oddly enough reverted to the tubbier
94 ' model, and over-grooved the sides of their bellies
TILS JLMAT1.
and backs, thinning their tone, until the genius
of JEROME discerned the error and reverted to the Brescian
type.
Here was born the great NICOLAS AMATI, 1596-1G84,
who struck out his own model, flattened, and in his best
time scarcely retaining a trace of the vicious side-groove of
the earlier Amatis.
On the same work-bench, as students in the school of the
immortal NICOLAS, sat ANDREW GUARNERIUS and the incom-
parable STRADIVARIUS, finishing t"heir master's violins and
copying for years his various models with supreme skill and
docility.
Almost next door, probably on the death of NICOLAS
AMATI, SIKADIVARIUS set up Iris shop, opposite the west
THE GUAENEHII AND. STRADIVARIUS. 249
front of tlie big church; there for fifty years more he
195. worked with uninterrupted assiduity; and next
KERn^o" door to him the famil J o f the GUARNEIUI had
STRADIVARIUS. their work-rooms, and in that little square were
all the finest violins made in the short space of about one
hundred and fifty years. The body of STRADIVARIUS lies
in ^the Church of the Rosary, not a stone's-throw from
his own house ; and so these great men died, and were
buried, working in friendly rivalry, and leaving their echoes
to roll from pole to pole.
I have a delicate ANDREW GUARNERIUS of 1665, which
shows admirably the transition between the full form of the
earlier Amatis and the superior flat model of NICOLAS
AMATI.
It was made, doubtless, under the eye of NICOLAS, and
perhaps criticised by STRADIVARIUS, who probably worked at
the same bench and shared ANDREW'S glue-pot.
In my ANDREW GUARNERIUS the drooping Brescian
corners have vanished, and the lower angles are turned
up sharp ; but the middle lengths fail to attain the
pleasantly balanced curves and the graceful upper width
and freedom of MR. AMHERST'S later Nicolas Amati, of
1676, a true gem, despite the apparent plainness of the
back.
ANDREW GUARNERIUS has also quite got rid of the rough,
coarse, thick Brescian S, which was always ugly and too
wide, and in its place the eye is rejoiced to find a lovely
250 OLD VIOLINS.
and delicately rounded S, unlike at top and bottom, but
only a shade less graceful than the freehand \vriting of
NICOLAS himself.
The great NICOLAS (1596-16P4) began to change his
model, reverting to the later Brescian in all but his sound-
holes and two curves, about 1625. His violins
1 >(->
THE GREAT increased in size, and would have increased in
power, had it not been for a remnant of the
early Amati side-grooving, which is said to thin the tone.
The dip from the foot of the bridge is thought to be
too great, but the upper part of the grand pattern is
truly noble. Some of his scrolls have been criticised as
too small and contracted, but there is nothing of this in a
1676 specimen before me; and although the corners are
pointed and highly elegant, there is nothing weak ; yet the
whole is full of feminine grace.
The varnish, when not as is usual rubbed off, inclines
to light orange with clear golden tints. The tone is so
sweet and sensitive that it seems to leap forth before the
bow has touched the strings, and goes on like a bell long
after the bow has left them. To a fine Joseph Guarnerius
you have sometimes to lay siege and then you are re-
warded, but the Nicolas Amati is won almost before it
is wooed.
The incomparable ANTONIUS STKADIVARIUS, or STIIADI-
STRADIVABIUS. 251
VARI, lived between 1644-1737. His latest known violin
bears date 1736, and mentions his age, ninety-
two. He worked without haste and without
STKADIVAIUUS.
rest. His life was interrupted only by the siege
of Cremona in 1702. But his art knew no politics, and the
foreign courts of Spain and France were quite as eager to
get his violins as the G OVERNOR OF CREMONA, or the DUKE
OF MODENA.
Up to about 1668 he was simply the apprentice of
NICOLAS ; we find scrolls and sound-holes cut by the pupil
on the master's violins. He even made and labelled for
NICOLAS.
In 1668 he leaves his master's shop and sets up for him-
self. But for thirty years this consummate student, whilst
making every conceivable experiment with lutes, guitars,
and violins, practically copied closely the best models of
NICOLAS AMATI.
Still we notice that from 1686-1694 his sound-holes
begin to recline, his form grows flatter, his curves extended,
his corners tossed up and pointed, the scroll bolder, varnish
inclining away from the browns and light orange to the rich
yellows and light reds. Notice the way in which his pur-
fling at the corners, like a little curved wasp's sting,
follows no outline of the violin, and is not in the middle of
the angle, but points freely towards the corner of the angle.
What chic ! as the French say.
In 1687 the master makes his long pattern not really
252 OLD VIOLINS.
longer, but looking longer because of the contracted sides.
The Spanish Quatuor, inlaid with ivory, illustrates the
fancy and skill of the workman as did also an exquisitely
carved lute by STRADIVARIUS, exhibited at the South Ken-
sington Museum.
It was not until STRADIVARIUS had entered upon his fifty-
sixth year that he attained his zenith and fixed his model,
known as the grand pattern.
Between 1700 and 1725 those extraordinary creations
passed from his chisel, even as the master-pieces on canvas
passed from the brush of RAPHAEL.
The finest of these specimens like that possessed by MR.
ADAMS, the Dolphin, and by MR. HART, the Belts Strad.
fetch from 300 to 1,000.
To try and describe these instruments is like trying to
describe the pastes, glazes, and blues of Nankin China.
Beneath the tangible points of outline, scroll,
1*7O.
A SPECIMEN character, and variety of thickness and modifica-
tion of form, dependent on qualities of wood
known to the master, there lie still the intangible things
which will hardly bear describing, even when the violin is
under the eye one might almost say under the micro-
scope. A rough attempt by contrast may be made in
detail. Take but one detail for the benefit of the general
reader, the inner side, curves and angles of the middle
boughts.
THE END OF STBADIVAEIUS. 253
In GASPAR and MAGGINI those curves are drooping at
the corners, longish and undecided in character ; in DUIFFO-
PRUGCAR it amounts almost to a wriggle. NICOLAS AMATI
balances the top and bottom of his hollow curve with a
certain mastery, but it still has a long oval sweep, with
a definite relation of balance between the top and the bottom
angle. Having mastered this sweep, STRADIVARIUS begins
to play with his curves and angles. He feels strong enough
to trifle, like a skilled acrobat, with the balance. He
lessens the oval, and tosses up his lower corner with a
curious little crook at the bottom ; the top angle towers
proudly and smoothly above it, yet it is always graceful
delicious from its sense of freedom, almost insolent in its
strength and self-confidence. There is a touch about
STRADIVARIUS here as elsewhere ; it is that which separates
the great masters everywhere from their pupils RAPHAEL
from GIULIO ROMANO, PAGANINI from SIVORI, STRADIVARIUS
from CARLO BERGONZI. The freedom of STRADIVARIUS
becomes license in CARLO BERGONZI and over-boldness in
JOSEPH GUARNERIUS ; for, although the connection between
JOSEPH and STRADIVARIUS has been questioned, to my mind
it is sufficiently clear.
Although STRADIVARIUS made down to the last year of
his life, still after 1730, feeling his hand and
IHE END OF sight beginning to fail, he seldom signed his
6TRADIVAKIUS.
254 OLD VIOLINS.
of him as he lived and moved and had his being at
Cremona in 1730, Piazza Domeuico. Old POLLEDRO,
late chapel-master at Turin, describes " ANTONIUS, the
lute-maker," as an intimate friend of his master. He
was high and thin, and looked like one worn with mnch
thought and incessant industry. In summer he wore a
white cotton night-cap, and in winter orie of some woollen
material. He was never seen without his apron of white
leather, and every day was to him exactly like every other day.
His mind was always riveted upon his one pursuit, and he
seemed neither to know nor to desire the least change of
occupation. His violins sold for four golden livres apiece,
and were considered the best in Italy; and as he never
spent anything except upon the necessaries of life and
his own trade, he saved a good deal of money, and the
simple-minded Cremonese used to make jokes about his
thriftiness, and the proverb passed, " As rich as STRADI-
VARIUS."
A traveller who lately visited his house, still standing in
the square of Cremona, remarked that it was heated through
with the sun like an oven. He said you might sit and sweat
there as in a Turkish bath. That was hovr the Cremona
makers dried their wood, and so it was their oils distilled
slowly and remained always at a high temperature, their
varnish weltered and soaked into the pine bellies and syca-
more backs beneath the tropical heat of those seventeenth
century summers !
THE GREAT JOSEPH. 255
JOSEPH ANTHONY GUARNERIUS DEL GESU ,^~ (1687-1745)
towers a head and shoulders above the other illus-
trious GUARNERIT. viz. ANDREW and JOSEPH,
200.
THE GREAT his sons, PETER, brother of JOSEPH (son), PETER
OP MANTUA, son of " JOSEPH Filius ANDREW."
The loud and rich tone of the later Joseph del Gesu
violins makes him the formidable rival of STRADIVARIUS.
PAGANINI preferred his Joseph, now in the Municipal Palace
of Genoa, to all others.
Who was JOSEPH'S master? The idea that JOSEPH, or
anyone who lived either in AMATI'S or GUARNERIUS'S
house AMATI on the right, GUARNERIUS on the left of
STRADIVARIUS, in the same square at Cremona was en-
tirely unaffected by the great man's influence, has always
seemed to me absurd. That influence has been denied as
vehemently in late years as it used to be formerly taken
for granted. Still, the great JOSEPH is claimed as the
pupil of JOSEPH, son of ANDREW that ANDREW who sat by
the side of STRADIVARIUS in NICOLAS AMATI'S workshop.
With this I find no fault ; but if the influence of STRADI-
VARIUS cannot be seen in the earlier Josephs, the later
Josephs show undoubted signs of the master, who between
1700 and 1730 had eclipsed all his predecessors. In some
details JOSEPH'S undoubted reversion to Brescian influence,
and that early, is interesting the flat model, the long
sound -holes, and, it must be added, often the rough work.
256 OLD VIOLINS.
Still, in JOSEPH'S middle period there occurs that very
high finish which reminds one of STRADIVARIUS. The
elegance of the Strad. scroll is never attained, perhaps
not even aimed at. The Josephs of about 1740 are most in
request. They are large and massively made, the wood of
finest acoustic property, the Brescian sound-hole toned down
and rounded more like STRADIVARIUS. A fine genuine
violin of this period will not go for less than two hundred
guineas, and four hundred would not be an out-and-out
price. Tbe GUARNERIUS head or scroll is often quaint and
full of self-assertion. The violin has the strongest make,
temper, and stamp ; the fourth string is often as rich as a
trumpet. His last period is troubled by certain inferior
violins called prison fiddles. The tale runs that JOSEPH was
imprisoned for some political offence, and was supplied with
refuse wood by the gaoler's daughter. The prison fiddle is a
boon to forgers ; their bad fiddles pass freely for interesting
" prison JOSEPHS."
With CARLO BERGONZI (1718-1755) and GUADAGNINI
(1710-1750) the great Cremona school comes to an end.
201 The very varnish disappears, the cunning in
TOE END wood-selection seems to fail the pale reflectors
OF THE .
CKEMONESE of a dying art, and the passion for vigour and
finish has also departed. If I have in the above
remarks omitted great names like HUGE RI us, CAPPA,
ALBANI, MONTAGNANA (Cremona and Venice), it is because
FLORENCE, BOLOGNA, ROME. 257
I am dealing with characteristics more than wirh men, and
have used my men, not in catalogue, but as landmarks in
art. As the greatest masters grow rare, the secondary stars
cannot fail to rise annually in value.
The violin, although it culminated, is not exhausted at
Cremona ; but it would lead me into a new branch of my
202. subject to deal with the other schools. These,
^jcMOGNA 1 ' a ^ ter a ^ are kut reflections, more or less pale or
BOMB, perfect, -of the incomparable Cremonese masters.
Florence, Bologna and Rome (1680-1760) may be briefly
summarised under the names of GABRIELLI, F.; TONONI, B.;
and TECHLEB, R. Venice (1690-1764) claims D. MOR-
TAGNANA (famous for his violoncellos), and SANCTUS SERA-
PHINO. Naples (1680-1800) boasts of the families of
TESTORE, the GAGLIANO, and GRANCINO. Milan owns to
C. F. LANDOLPHUS, a very capital maker, rapidly rising in
estimation (1750). He was a pupil of JOSEPH GUARNERIUS,
and beware of his clever imitations; beware still more of
those vulgar red imitations (from which even Gillott's
collection was not quite free), perpetrated on many a
passable LANDOLPHUS, to make him look like a GUARNERIUS
DEL GESTT.
Passing to the French school (1610-1880) we note the
fathers of it MEDARD (1610), BOQUAY and PIERAY (1700-
1730), DE COMBRE (1730-1760), and, greatest of all,
17
258 OLD VIOLINS.
LUPOT and PIQUE. These two last men, in all but their
silicate varnish, which chips rather than rubs,
203.
THE FRENCH made consummate copies of STRADIVARIUS ;
SCHOOL. , i- m .-i ,
their violins improve every year. To the late
M. VUILLAUME is due the merit of almost recreating a
taste for fine violin patterns, not only by his diligent
research and collection, but by his admirable studies in
the workshop and attention to detail. CHANOT and GAND
are also excellent devotees of the lost art. The awful
Mirecourt laboratory sends forth annually waggon-loads of
Cremonas, boiled, cleaned, rubbed, and otherwise withered
with apparent age. They smell as badly as they sound.
The immortal LUPOT greatest of French masters did not
boil and dry in ovens and cook with acids his woods ; he
copied fair and varnished full, and time is now doing for
him what it will never do for the revolting shams of Mire-
court. In fifty years LUPOT will rank little below
STRADIVARIUS himself in tone ; his roughness of timbre is
even now rapidly mellowing, and his sweet brilliancy is
rather suggestive of the clear ringing sweetness of the
Strad. than the loud rich roundness of the JOSEPH DEL GESU.
In passing to the German School (1621-1800, &c.), the
two M. ALBANIS of Botzen one M. of Gratz
204.
TUB GERMAN and a P. of Cremona are not to be confounded
SCHOOL.
the p alerm i tan E> ALBANT, pupil of N.
AMATI. Setting aside the FENDTS and LOTTS, who worked in
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. 259
England, there is but one German name paramount. It is
JACOBUS STEINER (1680 and onwards) he was unhappily
deeply infected with round viol ' tub ' model with the worst of
side scoops. After visiting Cremona his form improved, but
never attained to the late MAGGINI, much less to the later
NICOLAS type. His workmanship at the best is superb ; his
varnish green yellow or green brown often spoiled by being
rewashed and oiled by modern cooks his tone piercing, not
to say screaming; but in every way STEINER is so strong
and so full of character that his very defects were idolised ;
he fascinated his age, and his mistakes corrupted the violin
model in England and retarded the progress of Cremonese
form here for about one hundred years.
Passing to the English School, we have to note that
(like the French), the Brescian and Cremona makers were
at first copied up to the days of BARAK NORMAN
THE ENGLISH (1688-1740), when, the French remaining true
to Cremona, the STEINER mania seized upon
England ; but although DUKE (1768) and others leaned
much to the STEINER model, there certainly never was
a time in England when the Italian school had not its
eager copyists, and our BANKS (BENJAMIN) 1727 95, may
even be called the English AM ATI. During the last half
of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth
centuries the DUKE mania in England raged so furiously
that hardly a respectable kitchen in the land, not to speak
17 *
260 OLD VIOLINS.
of the beer-shop, was without its Duke violin. The DUKE
label was as recklessly forged here as the STEINER label in
Germany. A fine DUKE will always fetch money ; but fine
DUKES are not very common, although the market is choked
with the name.
With regret I now quit what I hope has been an instruc-
tive as well as an interesting field of observation. The
prospect opens before me as I close, and I feel positively
oppressed with the number of really good names I have
been unable even to allude to consistently with my pre-
scribed limits. The Cremona Sound, the Cremona Con-
noisseur, the Forger, the Fiddle Market, are still so
many untouched chapters, and each of the violin schools
here rapidly summarised would amply repay separate atten-
tion.
Perhaps the following mems. may be useful to the general
reader, and I note them briefly in conclusion..
Duiffoprugcar, Bologna and Lyons, 1540 (?) interesting
as an antique ; without much character ; weak tone ; strings
unequal in quality.
206.
TONE Caspar di Salo, of Brescia, 1560 1610 j
QUALITIES. powerful viol tone ^ mu ffled; but full, round,
loud tone in his later flat models.
G. P. Maggini, of Brescia, 1590 1640; crisper, clearer,
and as powerful.
Nicolas Amatij of Cremona. 15961684; very sweet and
ITALIAN SCHOOLS. 261
sensitive ; fourth string weak, but otherwise even and very
smooth in tone ; deficient in power.
Stradivarius, of Cremona, 1644 1737 ; clear, sweet, bell-
like, and at the same time round and full ; exceptional in
combining such qualities with a certain rich sensitiveness ;
not thin like Amati, nor gruff like Gaspar, nor coarse as
Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu is sometimes.
Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu, of Cremona, 1683 1745 ;
often louder than Stradivarius; full, rich, powerful, and
when in order, and kept so, sensitive and responsive ; often
fractious and husky if the least neglected. For solo playing
the choice lies between Stradivarius and Joseph Guarnerius.
Jacobus Steiner, German, 1620; piercing, and when not
screaming, then sweet and very fascinating, when the ear
gets accustomed to it ; fourth string wanting in roundness ;
first string as shrill and keen as a fife. In the folio wiug
picked catalogue I have italicised the greatest makers.
ITALIAN SCHOOLS.
Brescia, 15201620.
Gaspar di Salo, 1560 1610.
G. P. Maggini, 15901640.
Cremona, 1550 1760.
Andreas Amati, 15201580.
Jerome and Anthony Amati, 1570 1635.
Nicolas Amati, 15961684.
262 OLD VIOLINS.
Stradivarius, 16441737.
Joseph Anthony Guarnerius del Gesu, -rjT~ 1083 1745.
Carlo Bergonzi, 17181755.
Florence, Bologna, and Rome, 1G80 17GO.
Gabrielli, F. ; Techier, R. j The Tononis, B. [Duiflb-
prugcar], 151030.
Venice, 1GCO 17G4.
D. Montagnana.
Sanctus Seraphino. G. Tononi.
Neapolitan, 16801800.
Grancino Family. Testore Family.
Gagliano Family and F. Landolpho.
French School, 16101875.
Medard, 1610.
De Combre, 17301760.
Vuillaume, 17991875.
German School, 1G21 17 .
Albani, 16211680 (?).
Jacob A. Steiner, 1620 -- .
Klotz, 16701700.
ENGLISH SCHOOL. 263
English School, 16201832.
Wise & Rayman, 1620-1650.
Barak Norman, 16881740.
Banks, 17271795.
The Forsters, 17391808.
Duke, 1768, &c.
The Fendts, 17561832.
2Gi OX A LOAN COLLECTION.
III.
INTERLUDE
ON A CERTAIN LOAN COLLECTION.
THE following meditation suggested by the famous loan
exhibition of violins in 1872, forms a natural sequel to my
207. Royal Institution lecture. A few of the same
RELATION TO a li us i ons w i]} })(> nO w reneated ; but I did not
THE PREVIOUS
DISCOURSE, think it worth while to mar the unity of the
chapter as it stands by suppressing them ; they occur in
a different connexion, and are marshalled for a separate
purpose. I could not introduce into the previous lecture,
delivered before the Royal Institution, the additional facts
here dealt with short of prolonging a discourse already over
prolix, nor could I omit the old allusions without impairing
the setting of seme of the material connected with violin
history as it stands related to certain special gems of the
loan collection. I will therefore conclude my violin dis-
BEHIND GLASS. 265
sertations with a few reflections made several years ago in
the presence of a very interesting but mixed collection of
violins. This was my dream at South Kensington.
IV.
A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
IN the clear light through the diaphonous cabinets entirely
composed of plate-glass, at the South Kensington Museum,
such violins and specimens of the Viol tribe were
208.
BEHIND to be seen exhibited in the year 1872, as in all
probability were never before brought together at
any one time. In a space of a few square yards, I could
lose my way for hours. I pause, for instance, at a case full
of strange, uncouth, and yet elaborately finished viols called
Viols di Gamba, Viols di Bardone, Viols d'Amore ; I am
carried back to a time when the violin proper was still in
obscurity, when CASPAR DI SALO (1560-1610) was struggling
into notice with his thin-sided and tubby-stomached violins
proper, which look to us so graceless, and yet which in
reality sounded those notes of progress which were shortly
afterwards caught up by his pupil, MAGGINI, until they
swelled into the sweet tones of the AMATIS, and the full,
powerful sound torrents of STRADIVARIUS and the GUARNERII.
266 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
Turning from the dusky varnish and uncouth shapes of
the ancient viols, my eye is caught by the sharp and delicate
outline, and the polished agate splendour of a
\)i)t
CREMONA. Cremona violin in the next case. A century
has been quickly traversed, not so much that
viols ceased to be made in 1720 as that the violin of
that date could not possibly have been made in the 1620
period, from which we have just emerged. Then my
curiosity is excited for a moment by one of those graceful
pear-shaped lutes so common in sentimental pictures.
It is also by the great STRADIVARIUS. His, and all
other lutes, have long since gone out at best they
were poor things ; yet this specimen, exquisitely carved
with a rich, heavy, full-lipped Italian face, as a head a
splendid Satyr and Dryad curling around the neck, and
every detail of grooving and purfling as perfect as in one of
the great violins worth 300 guineas all this tells of an
age when beneath Italian skies, on Venetian balconies, or
from black, loose-curtained gondolas, the sound of the lute
struck by fair or chivalrous fingers constantly floated over
the shallow lagoons of the Adriatic, and was, doubtless, of
all others, the sound most loved of knights and ladies.
But I must pause on the threshold. I shall return to
210. this interesting loan exhibition ; I shall try and
i REVERT
TO VIOLIN
HISTORT. jjjg to disguise its weak places; but in con-
ou t what were its beauties, without attempt -
TO VIOLIN
SKETCH OF VIOLIN PROGRESS. 267
nexion with this violin meditation I desire to recall to the
reader, at the risk of being accused of repetition, several
facts and details which -will show how large and important
a part the violin has played in the development of the
musical art, and if, in again alluding to the rise and progress
of the violin, I shall seem to omit anything of importance,
I must refer my readers to my preceding Royal Institu-
tion lecture and a chapter on STRADIVARIUS, in Music and
Morals, where I have dwelt at some length upon the
general construction of the violin.
The violin, as I have already pointed out, had to wait upon
time. Its destinies, like those of music, up to a certain
211. point, were unprcgressive after that point, let us
8K v E io C uN P sa y 1530 its tri umphal march to 1730 was rapid
PEOJEESS. an d irresistible. Yet it is curious to notice how
slowly the great obstacles to its perfection were surmounted.
Something like a viol seems to have been in existence for
centuries before the model attained to anything like its
present shape, yet until it attained that shape no real
progress from barbarous scraping and weak tubby sounds
towards real music was possible. It is true that the
instrument kept pace with the development of music,
which was at first slow enough. The oblong box, with one
or more strings, and an almost flat bridge, could yield
nothing but rasping and twanging discord. Yet it was not
until melody was wedded to an improved notation that the
268 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
merits of curved bridges and scooped-out violin sides became
obvious. Without these it is, of course, next to impossible
to play on one string without sounding the others.
Then for how many years did the odious guitar frets
last ! Several old viols in the South Kensington Museum
212. have them still ; indeed, we believe that the
FRETS AND mami f ac ture of them was not extinct even in
FINGER-
BOARDS, the middle of the eighteenth century. But
what limitations they imposed upon the player; how they
cramped his art; how they made him lean upon props which
every violinist now scorns, even to learn his art by ; above
all, how they defeated the innate and subtle perfection of the
violin by preventing the player from taking quarter-tones, or
gliding up through imperceptible intervals; all which fine
and thrilling qualities belong to the perfectly smooth and
unmarked finger-board alone. What an indescribable charm
has that smooth ebony plate for the true artist ! We have
heard people describe their raptures upon surveying the cool
ivory and ebony keys of a grand piano ; but such raptures
are poor compared with those of the violin lover as he takes
up his instrument and looks through the four strings at the
black ebony finger-board upon which absolutely nothing is
visible, and yet which is ready at any moment to measure for
him to a hair's breadth the intervals of his delight. The
mystery is hidden, and yet to the cunning player it is an
open secret effects of which he has often proved the
THE VIOL D'AMORE. 269
potency sleep along that inclined plane myriads of swift
notes are ready to rush forth and greet him, as his fingers
slide up and down it. Weird harmonics will steal forth at
certain spots over which his finger broods without pressure,
yet with a sensitive and thrilling touch as though feeling
stronger contact too close for the bell- like sweetness desired,
and seeking rather to draw it forth by the magic of some
electric sympathy. Yet there is no hint or trace of the true
intervals upon the smooth finger-board : like the opening
and shutting of a door with a glimpse into Paradise ; like
the myriad tints upon broken water vanishing into the dark
transparent monotint, when the light on the wave is gone ;
so the ebony board, lately the arbiter of such changeful
melodies, sleeps silent, expressionless, the instant the busy
fingers are still. But what foul orgies of sound lie also
within its range when tampered with, used ignorantly, or
abused. What false and hateful intervals, what gross
screams, what wicked capabilities of perverting sound !
Well, half the violin's powers for delight or pain, for good
or evil, were for centuries destroyed by the use of frets. The
abolition of frets is not only the emancipation, it
21o.
THE VIOL is the creation, of the violin finger-board. Then,
' again, how long was it before it became evident
that for all practical purposes four strings, and only four,
were quite as many as could be strung upon any instrument
of the viol tribe with due regard to tone, and pitch, and con-
270 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
venience. Take a violin and add a fifth string to the bass ;
you must stretch it too loosely for an effective resonance,
or add one to the treble, aud it is superfluous as well as
inconvenient superfluous because we can get on the E
string notes as shrill as the human ear can recognise, and
inconvenient because any string tuned a fifth above the E
string, would be always snapping, and would probably by
its horrible tension at last pull the bridge through the belly.
No one can walk through the permanent collection of
ancient stringed instruments at the South Kensington
Museum without realising the point of these observations.
Yet Viols di Gamba were made habitually with six strings,
stupidly tuned at intervals of a third, tension low, sound
tubby; instead of four strings tuned in fifths, high tension,
sound bright. And at one time almost any number of
strings more were added by the caprice of makers, or the
senseless fancy of virtuosi. One limited use of several
strings, and one only, commends itself to us in instruments
of the Viol da Braccio, or large tenor make, namely, the
production .of arpeggios. Some years ago a gentleman
in M. JULLIEN'S band played beautifully on a viol of this
kind. He called it, if we remember rightly, by the old
name of Viol d'Amore. The effect produced was exceedingly
soft and lovely. The movement consisted of successions of
sweeping and beautifully harmonised arpeggios, effective
beyond anything that could be produced in that style on
four strings. He played upon six, if not more.
SYMPATHETIC WIRES. 271
Another quite extinct device consists of a series of
sympathetic steel wire strings stretched underneath the
bridge or on one side of it, in some cases
Zx4s
SYMPATHETIC through it, from neck to tail-piece, and tuned
to the same notes as the normal gut strings
above them. When these last were struck the steel
strings vibrated, harmonically as well as normally, and
must have produced a kind of mixture as when a piano is
played without dampers, or with a loud pedal down, or, as
when a carillon is set agoing, and the notes run into each
other because there is nothing to check their vibrations.
Some sensuous effects unknown to us were doubtless pro-
duced in this way ; but everything which tends to promote
an unregulated echo is destructive of music proper, just as
much as a sound-board which keeps echoing a speaker's
voice is to that extent destructive of speech proper.
Such devices, or " conceits/' as the old writers would say,
invariably disappear from musical instruments and orchestras
as sounds grow more and more out of noise through the
discipline of Art into music.
But to return to our violin. What was to determine the
shape and size of basses, viols, and violins ? The question
was fully illustrated in the loan exhibition of
215. J
THE which I am speaking. For some time it seemed
as if nothing but the caprice of amateurs and
lute-makers was to be consulted. All attempts to classify
272 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
the number and shapes of the viol tribe, up to at least
1600, must fail. Some idea of the infinite variety of these
instruments a variety which continued long after the
modern quartett of instruments (two violins, tenor, and
violoncello) had been established may be gathered by
the slight sketches of outlines which I have culled in the
South Kensington Museum. But as music acquired form,
science, and precision, musical instruments followed suit.
It is not too much to affirm that the madrigal created
the modern string quartett. The singing schools soon
divided the voice into the usual four divisions. The
madrigals of the Elizabethan Age brought these four
divisions into the most sharply defined perfection. At first
the crowd of viols stood like humble lackeys in the ante-
chambers of the vocal art, and were only called in to assist
the singers, the player standing over the singer and playing
the notes in unison with him. It was soon found that
each voice ought to have its appropriate viol the treble
voice a treble viol, or what we should call a violin; the
tenor and counter-tenor would be accompanied by a violin
or viola, or two violas of different sizes ; and the bass would
be helped through by one of those Viols di Gamba the
violoncello of the period of which the South Kensington
Museum can boast some splendid specimens. Here, then,
we have the elements at least of the modern quartett, but
in a sadly servile condition. But now and then it would
happen that a voice was absent, and then the voice, instead
VIOLONCELLO
VIOLS D I SAMBA
' J7QQ JGO 77VC 27V-C J686
VIOLA OLD VIOLAS OF I7 T . H CENTURY
VIOLIN SHAPES AND BOWS.
THE "LITTLE VIOLIN" BECOMES POPULAR. 273
of being attended by, would be replaced by, an instrument.
At last it appeared that the four instruments could play the
madrigal by themselves without the voices, and this was not
uncommonly done, as early as Elizabeth's time. We have
Madrigals of five and six parts apart for Violas and Voices,
by THOMAS WEELKES; DOWLAND, the celebrated lutenist,
published, in 1600, Songs or Ayres with Tablature for the
Lute Orpherion, with the Viol di Gamba. In 1605
instrumental music had already become very independent,
for TOBIAS HUME published Musical Concertes for two base
viols, expressing five parts, with pleasant reports one from
the other, and for two Theorbo viols, and also for the Theorbj
viole, with two treble viola, or two with one- treble, all
which shows that the viol tribe could by this time walk
very well alone, and, what is more important, that the
treble viol was steadily advancing in public favour.
TESTATOR, called IL VECCHIO, of Milan, about 1590, is
said by some to have been the first maker of the violin, but
216 DUIFFOPRUGCAR (beware of VUILLAUME'S copies !)
THE " LITTLE made undoubted violins at the beginning of that
VIOLIN "
BECOMES century. The new instrument first got into the
French bands, and then cautiously crossed the
Channel and began to bid for public favour as the fiddle,
or the little violin, in England. It was greeted with the
greatest contempt. Why, forsooth, was the peaceable rum-
bling of the old viols to be screamed down by this impudent
18
274 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
and airy little impostor ? The author of Mustek's Monument
raises almost the last scream against the king of instru-
ments ; it was to be found everywhere, and he could not bear
to see the big Theorbo lutes and lumpy viols " overtoped (in
His Majesty's band CHARLES II.) by squaling, scoulding
fiddlers." As for their music, he calls it merely "high-
prized noise." But the old masters had hit upon a model
which was not to be put down in a hurry when they drew
the outline of the first violins. When old viols first came to
be cut down, the proportions were naturally found to be all
wrong for an instrument of a smaller size; no doubt the
great bulginess of the early violins by GASPARD, DUIFFO-
PRUGCAR, 1515, and even those of CASPAR DI SALO (1560-
1610), where the contour is wonderfully in advance of the
age, but where the rise of the belly is carried right up
pumpkin-wise to the sides, results from the model suggested
by simply cutting down the bulging old tenors. Yet, even
in this form the superior handiness and sprightliness of the
violin shape and tone soon commended itself to the players
and the public alike. The following little verse gives a
correct account of the matter :
In former days we had the Viol in,
Ere the true instrument had come about ;
But now we say since this all ears doth win,
The Violin hath put the Viol out.
CHARLES II., probably in imitation of a far greater poten-
tate and contemporary, with whom his relations are only
RARE OLD SPECIMENS. 275
too well known through LORD MACAULAY'S history,
Louis XIV., had twenty-four fiddlers (Les petits violons du
Roi) to play to him during his meals. The French king
indulged himself in the same festive manner. And it is
doubtless from the Restoration (1660) that the violin began
to put the viol oat, and take its place along with its brethren
the tenor, violoncello, and contrebasse, until cabinet music
blossomed into the modern quartett form in which it has
long since reigned without a rival.
A few great names connected with the progress and
perfection of the violin must be noted. As early as 1449,
JOAN KERLINO, or CARLINO, founded a great
RARE OLD Lute School at Brescia. There was a finely-
formed viol reputed to be his in the South
Kensington Loan Collection, No. 114, about 1452: its
perfect finish and preservation make it almost unique.
VENTURI LINELLI, or Linaro, made viols at Venice in 1520,
but the specimen, No. 134, in the South Kensington, dated
1563, was without grace or any fine sense of proportion
we should say far inferior to the earlier BRESCIAN CARLINO
in everything except wonderful preservation ; but then it
is a hundred years later, and ought to have been better in
every respect. Although it is believed that TESTATOR, of
Milan, first made what he named a violin, yet BRESCIA was
undoubtedly the first great school of lutists and viclin-
makers, and GASPAR m SALO, of Brescia (1560-1610), was
18 *
276 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
the first man who really conceived of the violin as an
instrument worthy of a distinct individuality, and not
merely a bulgy viol cut down. In this maker the pumpkin-
bellies of DUIFFOPRUGCAR (1515) have considerably dimi-
nished; the instrument has been somewhat drawn out in
length, a well-defined scoop appears on either side of the
/ /'s, the middle is still high and barrel-like, the varnish is
fine, thick, and brown no tinge of the mellow red and
orange colours so lovely in the later Cremonese makers.
The tone of CASPAR'S first and second strings is lively,
bright, and piercing, " a dry golden sound," as DR. FOSTER
calls it ; the third string weak, but sweetly soft j the fourth
round and very fine. Compared with the later prodigies of
Cremona, the workmanship lacks finish and delicacy, but
the cutting is bold and original, the wood is strong, and the
//holes are straight and parallel one of the distinctive
marks of the Brescian school the purfling, or inlaid border
that marks the inner edge of all violins, is finely placed
and double, another distinctive mark of the same school.
JEAN PAUL MAGGINI (1590-1640), (not SANTO MAGGINI
of the 18th century), probably a pupil of CASPAR DI SALO'S
did all that could be done with his master's model, but the
sceptre had in reality passed to Cremona, when ANDREAS
AMATI (1530?-1580?) began to make violins. His violins
are small, his tone sweet but not powerful. His sons,
ANTONY and JEROME, who made violins together, excelled
STORY OF JACOBUS STAINER. 277
'him; and his grandson, NICOLAS AMATI, brought his father's
model to still greater perfection. He is considered the great
man of the family. Of JOSEPH GUARNERIUS and of STRADI-
VARIUS, it is not our purpose to speak at any length here.
The first, whose violins are distinguished for power above
all the AMATIS, but who does not equal the great STRADI-
VARIUS in perfection of model and finish, and equality of
tone, probably stands next to him in the estimation of most
violinists. They often say " If we cannot get a Stradivarius,
give us a Joseph Guarnerius."
There is one other maker who, at one time, enjoyed in
England at least a reputation almost equal to the Cremonese
218. makers, and that is JACOB STAINER. In 1644,
THE STORY joying C0 me from the Tyrol, he worked under
OP JACOBUS
STAINER. the AMATIS at Cremona. One of them
NICOLAS or ANTHONY, I cannot quite make out which
offered him a daugher in marriage, which he appears to
have declined. He had, for reasons it is needless here to
specify, already committed himself to MARGARETHA HOLZ-
HIMMER, whom he married on his return to Absom. She
was a peasant girl, and made him an uncongenial wife.
Before his marriage he made some of his finest violins ;
his work is equal in finish to the best Amatis the belly
is modelled higher than the back, the edges are strong
and round, the purfling is nearer to the edges than in the
Amatis, and very narrow, the // are beautifully cut and
278 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
shorter, the upper and under turns being perfectly round,
the neck and scroll very regular and smooth. These early
instruments are rarely to be found; the genuine labels are
written ; in the Tyrolese forgeries they are often printed.
As his family increased his work began to suffer ; he
grew slovenly and rapid, and the violins of this middle
period are very inferior. Before long, however, his merits
were recognised ; his violins sold well, and this seems to
have put him once more upon his metal ; for he again began
to work with great care, and made splendid fiddles. At
the close of his working life he made sixteen splendid violins,
twelve of which he sent as trophies of his genius to the
twelve Electors, and the remaining four to the Emperor.
These are known as Stainer- Electors. But the end was
near, for, either through love or loss of money, he went mad
and died soon afterwards. STAINER' s tone is pure and silvery,
and has a certain piercing quality : it has not the roundness
of GUARNERIUS, nor the sweetness of the Amati, nor the even
breadth and power of the Stradivarius, but its quality is
peculiar and, in the finest specimens, full of charm and
character.
BERGONZI, GUADAGNINI, SERAPHINO, ALBANI, are all
names of frequent occurrence in the violin trade.
219.
A FEW and are fetching increasingly large prices; whilst
KLOTZ, STAINER'S clever foreman, whose violins
are constantly mistaken for those of his master, though
A FEW NAMES. 27?
different, the belly being slightly depressed, deserves
special notice, and of all his pupils stands first. England
can boast of some good makers. RICHARD DUKE'S violins
were all the rage last century in this country before
the merits of the Cremonas were thoroughly understood.
Probably STAINER and DUKE, whose instruments are some-
what on the same model, were the most acceptable and
popular violin-makers for the English market until towards
the end of the last century, when the Cremonas began to
find their way over here, alas ! in too great numbers, for
most of them were spurious, and swamped everything else.
BENJAMIN BANKS, who was born and died in the last cen-
tury, is by many considered to be the. finest of the English
makers. His violoncellos are much sought after still.
WILLIAM FORSTER, who flourished in the middle of the last
century, was one, the greatest, of a family of highly
esteemed makers ; and BERNHARDT FENDT, who settled in this
country, and died only in 1832, was a clever maker, whose
imitations of old violins were good enough to take in the
judges at the South Kensington, in 1872, as I shall presently
show.
It is in the presence of a fine historical collection like
220. that of 1872, that I am moved to point out, as
CHARACTER j ~ o f rom case to case, in what consisted the
OV CREMOKA *
WORK, changes which transformed the tubby, old feeble-
toned viols into the brilliant, graceful Cremonese model,
230 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
with its almost living curves, and its clear sweet notes.
The progression has been from the large round viol model,
the hump-back and the pot-belly, to the small flat model,
with gentle arc in back and belly, softened away with
curves of delicious grace and smoothness to the edges of
the purfling. The four corners of the side curves have also
become full of distinctive character ; they are no longer
stumpy in outline as though they had difficulty in getting
away from the thick bulge of the sides, but they are carried
down in the Amatis with a clean and gentle sweep. The
Stradivarius corners are still more full of character : they
do not hang down so much as the Amatis, they are cut
out with great purity and almost lifted up with a kind of
balanced elasticity. No one ever laid in purfling like
STRADIVARIUS. The purfling consists of three thread-like
pieces of wood, two of ebony, the centre one of sycamore,
inlaid near the edge and following the lines of the violin in
the back and belly. It is of no use beyond giving finish to
what is really an exquisite work of Art. Every part of
a Stradivarius violin is an unhurried labour of love, and
the purfling is full of significance; not only does it test
the fine and delicate handling of the workman, but it calls
attention to the outlines of his instrument outlines which
are drawn with all the balanced freedom and grace of a
Greek frieze. But the royal purfling of STRADIVARIUS bears
his sign-manual especially in the treatment of the angles,
in the slender string-like points into which it runs it
CHARACTER OF CREMONA WORK. 281
seems to shoot suddenly into the corners with a peculiar
bend. Up to this point it has rigidly followed the outline
of the instrument; but on entering the corners it forms
a graceful twist of its own, like a wasp's sting, calling
special attention, as it were, to the delicately-finished angles,
and making a curve in harmonious contrast with them.
This subtle thought is peculiar to STRADIVARIUS and his
close copyists, and serves to illustrate the grand and original
freedom of his outlines. The two //'s, or sound-holes, are
drawn with the same originality, and with a certain severe
grace and temperate beauty. Let the eye run over the
grotesque wriggling holes of the old Viols di Gamba, the
vulgar slits, the senseless punctures, the crude experiments
of every possible description as illustrated in my plate ; let
us glance at the straight, stiff Maggini //'s, and then
glance back at the perfect wave of the / in the Stradi-
varius violin, cut as with the chisel of a great artist at a
single sitting, with an ardour and love of its beauty, and
its bend that, after 180 years, is as infectious as ever,
making the delight of connoisseurs and the despair of
forgers and all other copyists. But nowhere is the master
more distinctive than in the fluting of his scroll, and the
set and modelling of his heads. Perhaps it never occurred
to our readers that there was much difference between one
fiddle-head and another; yet a Stradivarius in known from
a Stainer, for instance, by his head, as surely as you can
tell a Greek from a Jewish face. Take up your Stradi-
282 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
varius, hold it straight out against the light with its belly
towards you, and note the commanding outline of the
head, full front. The two sides of the scroll seem to be
almost in motion, like curling wood thrown off by a revol-
ving centrebit or a plane in action. The two points seem
a little lifted up with incomparable energy and strength,
and lightly balanced with each other. The dip of the head,
relieved by the fine fluting, is powerful but not heavy ;
and in the finest Stradivarius and Joseph Guarnerius
patterns, reminds one of a lion's face in repose, only the
Stradivarius is invariably more graceful and beautiful in
its majesty where the Guarnerius is strong, with a sort
of rough and massive grandeur. But turn from either of
these full-fronted heads to lesser magnates, and what a
falling off is there some are what we may call pot-bellied
heads; others brutal, snub, bull-dog heads; others lean and
poor ; others simply coarse and stupid ; others cut mechani-
cally without character, or top-heavy, poor and thin- flanked
near the neck ; others without any sense of proportion,
the two sides of the scroll uneven, one dipping down lop-
eared, and the other turning up like a nez retrousse, and
so on, until the eye comes back and rests upon the perfect
and dignified charms of the Stradivarius head. It will bear
inspection look at it sideways, mark the throw of the
scroll ; was there any carving of GIBBONS or the Belgians,
any trailing vine-stem, any circling ivy cut in rich oak, more
finely felt in its sensitive edges, its harmonious sweep, its
LOST CONDITIONS. 283
delicate tendril- curves, than the Stradivarius maple-scroll,
with its smooth flesh-like flutings, its soft clean edge and
circular bends which, like the convolvulus or jessamine
coil, is never any part of a true circle? And then
look at the varnish lying like a sheet of thin jasper on
the back and belly, at once shielding these from decay,
whilst revealing century after century the transparent
filaments of the mottled maple or sycamore, and the sym-
metrical deal crossed between the fibres with millions of
tiny rays which show where lie the dessicated cells now
hollow and fit for perfect resonance through which the sap
once flowed. The rich, almost orange-coloured, varnish, is
as good as a magnifying glass : through it we can at this
day judge of the loving selection made of the choicest
timber, and the infinite care bestowed upon its prepara-
tion, the tempering as well as the carving of it.
We seek in vain for the conditions under which the great
violins were produced. Even if we had the love, the patience,
and the inspiration for the work, the work
221.
LOST itself would never pay it would never fetch
8 ' the price of the labour and time bestowed upon
it. The instrument itself, simple as it looks, is to be
composed of no less than seventy-one pieces. Sycamore or
maple must be got for the back, sides, neck, and circle.
Soft deal for the belly, bass bar, sound post, and six internal
blocks; ebony for the finger-board and tail-piece; white
284 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
and ebony for the purfling. The wood must be cut only in
December and January, and only that part must be used
which has been exposed to the sun. You may cut up
planks and planks before you find a piece suitable for a
really fine back or belly. Witness the grain of a
Stradivarius or Amati violin ; mark the almost pictorially
beautiful health and evenness of its wavy lines, free from
all knots, irregularity of growth, studded with symmetrical
and billowy veins, where the rich sap once flowed. And
when the wood is cut it must be tempered and dried, not
with artificial warmth, but with the slow and penetrating
influence of a dry, warm Cremona climate. For no cus-
tomer, for no market, can the process be hurried. And the
application of the varnish required corresponding care. It
was to be perfectly wedded to the rare wood a companion-
ship destined to last for ages to outlast so many generations
of men and women, was not to be enterprised or undertaken
lightly. In the spring, when the air got clear and bright and
the storms were past, the subtle gums and oils were mixed
slowly and deliberately : hours to stand, hours to settle,
hours for perfect fusing and amalgamation of parts ; clear
white light gleaming from roads strewn with the dazzling
marble dust of Lombardy ; clear blue sky, warm dry air,
and the skill of an alchemist, these were the conditions for
mixing the incomparable Cremona varnish. So deliberately
was it prepared and laid on, just when the wood was fit to
receive it laid on in three coats in such a manner as
GOOD AND BAD FIDDLES. 285
to sink into the dessicated pores, and become a part of the
wood, as the aromatic herbs and juices become a part of the
flesh that is embalmed for a thousand years. All through
the summer did that matchless varnish, which some say
contained ground amber, and which at any rate was charged
with subtle secrets, sink and soak into the sycamore and
deal plates, until now, when age has rubbed away its clear
and agate crust in many places, the violin is found no longer
to need that protection, for the wood itself seems to have
become petrified into clear agate, and is capable throughout
its myriad pores and fibres of resisting the worm, and even
damp and the other ravaging influences of ordinary decay.
The old varnishes have been closely imitated by M. VUIL-
LAUME, and other clever makers, but a good judge can tell
the genuine from the false. It has often been
222.
GOOD AND maintained that the dryness of the wood gave
a ' the fine quality of tone desired ; and the French
makers have accordingly baked the wood of their new
violins; but although the tone has been thus to some
extent permaturely mellowed, there is every reason to
fear that the baked fiddles, like some old fiddles made
of too slight wood and cut too thin, have a tendency to
get " played out " ; that is, after attaining tone they lose
tone. Age, no doubt, improves wood, and the constant
vibration of playing tends, it is said, to shake into hollows
the pores of the wood, and expel the particles of dried sap
286 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
in dust. But the grand secret after all lay in the manufac-
ture of the original instrument, in the shape, in the prepa-
ration of the wood before the parts were fixed together,
in the varnish and general adjustments of the interior. The
violin, as it comes from the hands of the great makers, as
I shall presently illustrate, was always fine. Age and
playing cannot make a good fiddle out of a bad one, although
age and playing doubtless improves good fiddles. There are
hosts of instruments a hundred years old which are, and
always will be, bad to the last degree.
Much has been said about the capricious shape of the
violin. Some professors have maintained that two flat
223. boards for back and belly would be better than
THE MYSTIC auv curve I answer that every degree of flat.
RDLE OF *
TIIUMB. ness uas been tried. In the case of the guitar
it has been adopted, but the present form of a slightly
curved belly and back the Stradivarius pattern, I must
reiterate is the result of centuries of experiment, and it
has held its own, and seems likely to do so, against the most
modern and scientific patterns, of which there have been
many. The fact is, that in the perfection of each technical
trade there is something which escapes analysis. The
last handful of refined tin or Drontheim copper thrown
in apparently without any apparent method, but with
the infallible method of instinct at a particular moment
when the seething mass of molten metal reaches a cer-
THE MYSTIC PULE OF THUMB. 287
tain temperature, or presents a certain appearance that
is indispensable to the rich true tone of the bell. Yet the
proportions were fixed before. Yes ! but that handful, under
the circumstances, was yet needful. So with the violin : a
certain curve, a block inside placed instinctively a hundredth
of an inch one way or the other, a slight hollow, a gentle
rise, things which can hardly be weighed and measured,
because, with each separate specimen on the same model,
there are differences whoever saw two Stradivarius violins
alike? and differences, however small, change the subtle
relations of different parts. These are things which baffle
rule and measurement, and make it impossible to produce
Stradivarius tone to order. Nor have more ambitious
attempts to change those measurements succeeded better,
even when Stradivarius measurements have been rightly
adopted. Some of us may have heard of a late experiment
in France, where a scientific violin and a Stradivarius were
played out of sight to a select body of judges, and the judges
were fairly puzzled to tell which was which ; hence it was
inferred that there was no difference. As well tell a man
who has been tasting port and sherry alternately several
times with his eyes shut that there is no difference between
these wines because his sense of taste is not proof against
a certain test invented to confuse him. The ear is as delicate
and as easily perturbed as the palate.
But the real answer to such modern rivals of STRADI-
288 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
VARIUS is that no one will play upon them who can get the
genuine article. The extreme difficulty of getting
DEAB TO a really fine old violin would in itself create a
demand for any cheap instrument which could
yield even a fair equivalent in quality. But as regards
quality, the secret is one affecting the player quite as
much as the listener. A good player can bring a good
sound out of almost anything, but he feels the difference.
A good whip can drive almost any horse somehow and
get along. But there are endearing qualities in the
rare old violins that cannot be described. They answer
to your lightest touch ; they can be ridden without saddle,
and driven without bit or bridle ; they seem to vibrate
in advance, and anticipate your most delicate shades of
emotion. The coarse fiddles you never can get to under-
stand you, the medium is too gross; you can thrash the
sound out of them, and others who know not what you want
to get or to experience are well satisfied ; but you are not.
You find in the Cremona an echo of the human soul itself.
When BALZAC tells us of a man who had imprisoned the
soul o his mother in a violin, he was nearer
225.
TOE SOUL OF a certain truth than some of his readers fancy.
A riKEMONA. m i -I ,1 , j . ,. .
Ine soul that is imprisoned in your violin is
not your mother's, it is your own soul, seeking and
finding through the most sensitive of all musical instru-
ments an utterance such as the human voice alone can
FORGERIES. 289
equal, but not excel. Indeed, it seems that the more genius,
the more time, the more love, the more absorption, the more
experience have gone to the making of a violin, the more it
has become assimilated to the soul of a man. We are ever-
more taking out of these noble old violins, the great
inexhaustible souls that STRADIVARIUS and the AMATIS spent
their lives in pouring into them. The violin is like the earth
itself, you can only get out of it so much of agricultural
wealth as has been put into it.
And now we may well shudder at the dreadful things
which have been done in the direction of systematic forgeries
of all kinds. Germany is to blame for a vast number of
coarse and impudent fiddles labelled with and
libelling the names of GUARNERIUS, the AMATIS.
FORGERIES.
and even STRADIVARIUS, and worth from one
pound to thirty shillings a-piece. But the most dangerous
of all forgeries are the French forgeries at the close of
last century by the firm of LUPOT, and the more modern
ones by VUILLAUME on the whole the best maker of
the present century. These violins are calculated to
deceive all but the best judges. The most shameful
of all practices is one of which our own countrymen
cannot altogether be acquitted. A fine violin has often
been taken to pieces and two or even three others made
out of its parts. The genuine back, or head, or belly,
or even sides being relied on to do duty for the spuriousness
19
290 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
of tlie rest, aiid the whole violin has often passed as a genuine
instrument and fetched a high price. This infamous device
has led to the destruction of many a really grand old violin.
It is a bitter and heartless mockery to see some noble head
and neck on a vile belly, or to find a royal GUARNERIUS back
mated to a wretched modern French or English set of ribs
and belly. Yet the demand for Cremonas has become of
late so extensive that we tremble to think what the fate of
the few remaining complete violins may be when once they
come, as come they must, from time to time, into the open
market.
And now a word about violin bows. It is, no doubt,
possible to play upon a violin with a tobacco-pipe, or almost
anything that sets the strings in vibration, but
a good well-balanced bow is the indispensable
VIOLIN BOWS.
magic wand required before the magician can
produce his more subtle and amazing effects. Up to the
middle of the seventeenth century, in 1650, the violin bow
was short and clumsy, something like our double bass bows,
only without any clasp to keep the horse-hair flat, or screw
to pull it tight. CORELLI, in the seventeenth century, played
with an awkward bow, much curved, with hardly any elas-
ticity, and ill adapted to produce those finely gradated effects
in which violinists now delight. The only idea of expression
these old masters seem to have had, was that of playing a
passage first loud and then soft. TARTINI (1730), whose
VIOLIN BOWS. 291
romantic genius cliafed against the old stiff style, much
improved the bow, making it thinner, longer, more elastic,
and, above all, giving it the curve backwards instead o
forwards, a peculiarity which violin bows have since retained.
It was not, however, until the middle of the eighteenth
century, that TOURTE, at Paris, devoted himself to the final
improvement of the bow. He is said to have introduced the
button and screw, to have abolished the useless prolongation
of the point, and given the violin bow that length and sweep
which was afterwards brought to such perfection, and which
enabled PAGANINI and his followers to effect a revolution in
the art of violin playing. My plate will give at a glance
the principal improvements in the violin bow.
It is doubtful whether any bow-maker has surpassed our
own EDWARD DODD, who, like so many of the great violin-
makers, was very long-lived, and died in 1810 in Salisbury
Court, Fleet Street, aged, it is said, 105 years. The usual
length of a modern violin bow is about twenty-nine inches
from top to toe.
In noticing the progress of the violin, it is not possible
entirely to separate its history from that of some who have
played upon it. Players and instruments have
ABODT acted and re-acted upon one another in a remark-
able way. Nor does the violin owe a trifling debt
to amateurs. They have brought it into notice ; they have
kept it there; tbey have paid the makers; they have
19 *
292 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
encouraged the professionals. From the earliest times,
the viol tribe has had a strange fascination for amateurs,
and a very curious list might be made out of its unpro-
fessional votaries. STEPHENS, in his Essays and Characters,
1615, observes that a fiddler is, when he plays well, a
delight only to those who have their hearing ; but is, when
he plays ill, a delight only for those who have not their
hearing. But we demur to this last statement: for the
fiddler is always a delight unto himself. The bad player
from the first is never deterred from his absorbing pur-
suit by the horrible sounds which he produces. He may
tire of the flute, cornet, or piano ; but the variety of screams
and scratches that can be got out of rosined horse-hair
rubbed upon catgut, at once establishes the violin supreme
in variety and attraction. SALOMAN once said to GEORGE
III., whilst instructing that monarch in the subtle art,
" Fiddlers may be divided into three classes. To the first
belong those who cannot play at all; to the second, those
who play badly; and to the third, those who play well.
You, sire, have already reached the second"; which re-
minds one of HAYDN'S reply to another royal personage who
was anxious to know what the composer thought of his per-
formance, " Vy, sir, your Highness plays like a Prince ! "
But fiddlers did not all at once become the companions of
princes. Their music used to be called simply " noyse."
Mulligrub, in the Dutch Courtesan, says, " Oh, wife 1 oh,
wife ! oh, Jack ! how does thy mother ? Is there any
THE CLERGY AS FIDDLERS. 293
fiddlers in the house ? " Mrs. Mulligrub replies, " Yes ;
Mr. Creakes's noyse/'
Yet though from the earliest times up to the great
Cremona period, the small viol was associated almost exclu-
sively with routs, pot-houses, or at best dancing-parties, the
clergy may claim the merit of having been true to it from
the first.
The clergyman of EDWARD II/s time, when he went out
into society took, in addition to his kerchief and his comb,
his " rowbyble," otherwise called rebella or viella.
229
THE CLERGY The old viols were much used in churches, and
AS FIDDLERS. ,,, -, ., , . , f ,1
although it was some time betore the new-
fangled violin was admitted into the sanctuary, yet the
Brescian and Cremonese models soon forced an entrance ;
and I have in my possession a genuine GUARNERIUS which
has unfortunately been cut down in the ribs, and still
retains the mark where a hook has been fastened into the
back to fasten the chain which went round the player's
neck, and supported the violin whenever he had occasion in
processions to drop suddenly on his knees at the elevation
of the Host. OURY pointed out to me the little round hole
in the back, since carefully plugged. BOURDALOUE, the
celebrated French preacher, found the violin indispensable
to the composition of some of his sermons. He used to
say that he often got too depressed to treat his subjects
with the necessary vigour and variety. He would then
294 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
resort to exercise and to a good stiff practice on his violin,
and would find himself completely restored by the process.
I am told that DR. NEWMAN (now Cardinal) is an excellent
violinist. After this we may think the poet COWPER a little
hard on another reverend fiddler the excellent CHARLES
WESLEY, who, at the close of some laborious day, would
often resort to his violin.
With wire and catgut he concludes the day,
is a sharp line which the kind-hearted poet is said to have
regretted in his later years.
A more graceful comment was called forth from DEAN
SWIFT, when in his presence a lady's mantle or mantua
caught fire and injured a gentleman's violin that happened
to be lying near it :
"Mantua, VJE! miserae nimium vicina Cremona\ "
The rise of the violin in England was greatly indebted to
royal patronage. QUEEN ELIZABETH was not only in the
habit of dancing to it, but presented a quaint
KINGS AND but splendidly carved specimen of the iustru-
VIDDLEES. .-, -r* ^
ment to the EARL OF LEICESTER, preserved
in the South Kensington Museum, in the loan collection,
numbered 125. In 1613, ten of the king's violinists received
one pound a-piece for performing at the Court masque.
CHARLES GUEROLT and THOMAS GILES, at different times
KINGS AND FIDDLERS. 2C'5
instructors of music to PRINCE HENRY afterwards HENRY
VI., had annuities of one hundred marks each. CHARLES I.
was a great patron of music, and took lessons from MR.
COPERARIO, a line player on the Viol di Gamba. In the
accounts of JAMES I., we find a charge of forty pounds for
a set of viols for the king. This king did himself the honour
to incorporate the musicians of London, when they had for
arms, " Azure, a swan argent within a tressure counter-flure ;
or, in a chief, gules, a rose between lions ; or, for crest, the
celestial sign Lyra." And CHARLES I., in his eleventh year,
granted a charter to NICHOLAS LANIERE and others, styling
them " Marshell Wardens and Cominalty, of the Arts and
Science of Musick in Westminster, in the county of Middle-
sex." But CHARLES II. did most for the violin by giving
it the preference over all the old viols in his private band.
PEPYS, in his Diary, lets us perceive the pride and solace
he took in his violin. "21st November, 1660. At night
to my viallin. The first time I have played on it since
come to this house, in my dining-roome, and afterwards
to my lute there ; and I took much pleasure to have the
neighbours come forth in the yard to hear me. December
3rd. Rose by candle, and spent my morning in fiddling,
till time to go to the office. 12th April, 1669. Home
and after sitting awhile thrumming upon my viol
and singing, I to bed, and left my wife to do
something to a waistcoat and petticoat she is to wear
to-morrow."
296 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
It is hardly necessary to observe that the Church and
the aristocracy now vied with each other in promoting the
interest of music, and especially in their grandes passions
for the violin. Amongst the exhibitors at the South
Kensington I find the names of several clergy, and the
Dukes of EDINBURGH and of LEINSTER, with many other
illustrious noblemen, who have not been slow in bringing
together several splendid instruments for exhibition, some
of which I shall have occasion to allude to presently.
A great deal has lately been said about the propriety
of ladies playing the violin. Some people seem to think it
quite a novelty, but the practice in England at
SSvl
LADIES AS least is old enough. On the painted roof of
VIOLINISTS. Peterborough Cathedral, said to be not later than
1194, is depicted a female figure seated and holding on her
lap a sort of viol with four strings and four sound-holes :
her left hand grasps the head, whilst she draws a bow
across the strings with her right. Amongst the royal
accounts, November 2, 1495, we read, " To a woman who
singeth with a fidell, 2s. ; the queen's male ' fideler ' of the
period, Feb. 17, 1497, was paid ' in rewarde/ 1 6s. 8d."
Poor ANNE OF CLEVES, after her divorce from HENRY
VIII., amused herself sometimes by playing on a sort
of viol with six strings and frets, but no distinct finger-
board. From a ballad in CHARLES I.'s reign, I find that
the art of viol playing was not uncommon amongst
LADIES AS VIOLINISTS. 297
ladies ; and amongst the accomplishments of a lady, we
read that
She sings and she plays
And she knows all the keys
Of the viol de Gamha and lute.
In more modern times ladies have excelled on the violin.
MOZART wrote a sonata for REGINA SCHLICK, born at Mantua,
1764. LOUISE GAUTHEROT, a Frenchwoman, was also dis-
tinguished for her concertos played at the London Oratorio
Concerts, 1789-90. LUIGA GERBINI, a pupil of the cele-
brated VIOTTI, played solos at Lisbon in 1799, and afterwards
visited London in 1801. SIGNORA PARAVICINI, another of
VIOTTI'S pupils, was a favourite of JOSEPHINE, the wife of
BUONAPARTE. She afterwards grew so poor as to be obliged
to part with most of her wardrobe, but was charitably helped
by some generous Italians at Milan. In 1827 she was much
admired, and in the words of a poet
Flourished her bow and showed how fame was won.
She played at Bologna as late as 1832. The names of
MESDAMES KRAHMEN, SCHULTZ, ELEONORA NEUMANN, and
FILIPOWICZ, will be familiar to some of our readers, whilst
few living musicians will need to be reminded of MDLLE.
SOPHIE HUMLER and MADAME NORMAN-NEUUDA.
It was, I believe, once maintained that the arm of a
lean was more fit for a lady than a bow arm ; but that
prejudice has now happily vanished. Indeed nothing can
298 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
be more appropriate in a lady's hands than a violin
properly held and properly played. If she have a good
arm it is shown to the best advantage ; if she have a pretty
hand and tapering fingers, and a slender wrist, all these
are thrown into the most graceful positions by the action
of bowing and fingering.
Her arms, shoulders, and hands, her head and neck, and
indeed her whole body, have but to follow sympathetically
the undulating and delicate curves of the violin itself. A
beautiful woman holding a beautiful violin is one of the
most beautiful sights in the world. There are refinements
of sentiment and of execution, which a woman's sensitive
hand is peculiarly fitted to render ; in delicacy of touch and
finely gradated effects she is unsurpassed, and although
usually deficient in roundness of tone, yet both in rapidity
of execution and in fine feeling, have we not lately seen
in the case of MADAME NORMAN-NERUDA quid famina
possit \
Some of our readers may be interested to know the names
of the favourite violins used by several illustrious musicians.
232. MOZART, MM. ALARD and Sivoiu, all possessed
VIOLINISTS f ine STAINER violins. PAGANINI'S favourite instru-
AND THEltt
VIOLINS, ment, now at Genoa, was a JOSEPH GUARNERITJS.
DRAGONETTI'S double-basses, chiefly by GASPAR DI SALO,
were duly displayed at the South Kensington Loan Exhibi-
tion. SIGNOR BOTTESINI produces his marvellous effects and
VIOLINISTS AND T1IE1U VIOLINS. 299
musical gymnastics upon a small CARLO TESTORE contrebasso,
This Milanese maker dates his instruments 16 , the last
two figures being always written in MS., a common practice
with the old makers, who sometimes even wrote the whole
label proprid manu. The forgeries, on the other hand, have
often the whole label printed. LINDLEY, the great violon-
cello player, seems to have been strangely partial to English
makers. He made his debut on a THOMAS SMITH, whose
instruments average from five to eight pounds ; and for
nearly forty years he played at the Italian Opera on a WIL-
LIAM FORSTER, which he surnamed "The Eclipse." SIGNOK
PIATTI owns a splendid STAINER tenor, lately exhibited in the
South Kensington Museum. DE BERIOT, oddly enough,
chose, for many years, to play on a MARIANI, of Brescia,
(1570-1620), by no means one of the first makers; indeed,
he lived before the splendid Cremonese period, and followed
the models of MAGGINI. OLE BULL possessed a remarkably
fine MAGGINI, with Caryatides, said to be by BENVENUTO
CELLINI. In 1861, M. VIEUXTEMPS used a LORENZO STORIONI
(about 1782). This maker was the last of the old Cremonese
school. He made" on the model of JOSEPH GUARNERIUS, and
his tone was much admired. M. JOACHIM, I believe, plays
habitually on a fine STRADIVARIUS. PROFESSOR ELLA informs
me that MOLIQUE, PIATTI, AUER, and others have made their
debut upon inferior instruments, and only acquired their full
reputation when later they became possessed of fine violins.
Many aspirants to fame have had to thank the Professor .for
300 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
the loan of his GUARNERIUS and STRADIVARIUS at the Musical
Union Concerts. But it must be remembered that most
violinists have several instruments with different qualities,
suitable for different occasions, and, like other men, they
are liable to part with their instruments and acquire
others.
I will now ask the reader to look with me a little more
closely at that Loan Collection of 1872 in the South
233. Kensington Museum, which I have from time
to time referred to in the course of this pro-
TIIE LOAN
A CBITICISM
ON THE LOAN
COLLECTION, tracted meditation. That exhibition, though now
closed, has an interest and significance for all lovers of violins
far beyond the limits of a few show-months. The instru-
ments are most of them more or less historical. Each is
known to a large circle of admirers ; some have a world-
wide reputation, whilst a few have been puffed into notice
and clearly over-rated. Under these circumstances, in the
interests of Art, I shall not hesitate to place on record some
judgments upon them which, I trust, may have more than
an ephemeral value.
Let us once more approach these fascinating glass-cases,
determined to see all that can be seen, and lay it to heart.
At first the eager student will probably be disappointed.
They all look to him so much alike; is there really the
difference between 20 and 600 in the instruments before
him? I remember that my first visit to the Italian
CRITICISM ON THE LOAN COLLECTION. 301
picture-galleries filled me with the same feeling of puzzled
disappointment. The pictures I liked were seldom the
best; all the browns were much alike, and one old master
seemed little different from another ; above all, a fine copy
looked quite as good as, or rather better than, the original.
It is only after looking, and looking for months, for years,
that the old painters reveal themselves ; and it is only by
examining and brooding over violins that the characteristics
of each master slowly come out beyond a shadow of a
doubt, until we may be said to know a good fiddle when we
see it.
Let us examine first, one case containing three violins,
lent by M. VUILLAUME, which is in some respects more
interesting than all the rest put together. It
oo J
contains the unique "Messie " STRADIVARIUS (91):
THE MESSIE.
its history is. romantic. It was finished in 1716,
and until a few years ago had never been played on at
all. It was bought in 1760 by the COUNT Cozio DE
SALABUE, who never played it, but kept it spotless, like
some rare jewel, till his death. His heirs sold it to
LUIGI TARISIO, who kept it jealously without allowing any-
one even to see it. At his death, in 1854, it was hidden
away in the " Ferme de la Croix," near the little village of
Fontanelle, Navarre. There M. VUILLAUME rediscovered
it in January 1855, and upon breaking its silence for the
first time discovered that it possessed all the finest qualities
302 A SOUTH KENSINGTON LEE AM.
of the finest STRADIVARIUS violins, although it had never
been played upon until then.
\Ye stand reverently before it fresh from the great
master's hand, as though finished yesterday it is for the
first time unveiled in all its intact glory to the gaze of thou-
sands to whom for years it has been a kind of myth. It is
as though the ivory Minerva of PHIDIAS that stood once
in the Parthenon, should be discovered hidden away with
the utmost care in some deep, dry, and hermetically sealed
sepulchre of the East, and brought over scathless to be set
up amidst the Elgin fragments, the only perfect relic of them
all. So stands this matchless new violin amidst its time-
worn, rubbed, and fractured brethren.
It is of the grand pattern, and yet, as in Milan Cathedral,
beauty rather than power is its distinguishing characteristic;
it is massive without looking massive ; its strength is hidden
beneath its grace. The back is in two parts, the wood very
choice. The fine graining of the flat belly is remarkable.
The holes are delicately cut, the left / a shade lower than
the right a practice so common that it must have been
intentional with STRADIVARIUS his fine eye not tolerating
even there the suspicion of mechanical work. "We see in this
violin alone what the perfect STRADIVARIUS corners were ; in
every other known specimen the varnish and the wood are
both rubbed. In the " Messiah " they are untouched and
clean-looking, wondrously sharp and wide-awake, yet without
vulgarity, and of a perfect finish.
THE MESSIE. 303
The case and neatness of the purfiing, which has, of course,
never been repaired, is incomparable, and over the whole
instrument lies a thick, rich, red-brown varnish, wondrous
to behold ; the washing of it is level and lavish, and unworn
by time or use. The brush seems to have left it about
a week it is hanging up in the warm workshop at Cremona,
and has just dried with all the glitter fresh upon it. The
neck has been skilfully lengthened by M. VUILLAUME ; but
in order to avoid touching the fabric he has inserted a piece
of wood flat between the heel and the rib instead of cutting
into the internal block : the usual method adopted in length-
ening the old fiddle necks for modern use.
The head is light and graceful rather than heavy or power-
ful, the scroll thrown off like a ribbon lightly curled around
the finger and drawn in ; one side of the scroll is slightly
lower than the other, the fluting smooth, with a surface like
that of clear and still water, and the lines of the scroll are
picked out with a thick rim of brown paint or varnish that
serves to accentuate the outlines of the head just as purfling
calls attention to the contour of the back and belly. In
every other violin this black head-rim has been almost
entirely effaced, but in the " Messiah '' it remains to show
us the maker's intention. He meant you to take up his
violin and to see at a glance its whole outline, traced and
emphasized by a sharp purfling carried out in the head by
a deep rim of black varnish. This brooding over the beauty
of curves, this anxiety that they should be manifest to all
304 A
men, is most instructive and touching ; neither the purfling
nor the black paint added to the tone, or even the preser-
vation of the instrument, it was the art instinct of the old
makers piercing the manufacture.
By the side of the " Messie " hangs the " Pucelle " violin
of STRADIVARIUS. It, also, has a history. It bears a label
1709; it has been very little played on; it
^OO.
THE came to Paris in 1840 ; it passed into the hands
of M. LEROY, banquier, and at his death went
to his heir, M. GLANDAZ. It is of the grand pattern ;
purfling repaired under the left or chin side ; the f's boldly
cut and coarser than in the "Messiah/' and it seems to
lack the absolute sense of proportion between the top
and bottom, which gives to the ' ' Messiah " its regal
breadth and freedom of outline. The head is powerful,
though less happy than some others ; it bears remains of
the black paint on the scroll ; the varnish is thick and rich
in colour, browner and yellower than in the " Messiah/'
which is reddish. The back is in two parts, and the belly
rises in excess of the " Messiah." A STRADIVARIUS violin,
lent by M. E. LECOMTE (87), is finer than the " Pucelle/'
although the head is doubtful probably an old French head
in other respects it is a masterpiece. One of the late
MR. GILLOTT'S STRADIVARIUS violins (92), is a good specimen;
but the varnish is poor thin stuff. The (140) GILLOTT'S
BO-called STRADIVARIUS tenor, is a very doubtful affair. The
ANTONIUS AND JOSEPH. 805
belly and holes are very good, but the scroll is simply mon-
strous ; the back and sides are of the poorest, coarsest wood ;
the corners hang down like those of an AMATI. STRADIVARIUS
never cut them. They may be by G RANGING, or more likely
still, by BERGONZI, after STRADIVARIUS'S death.
M. GALLAY'S and M. P. PAWLE'S STRADIVARIUS basses
naturally attract us. The first, which was purchased for
800, has a finer scroll than the other, and is on
ZOVi
ANTONIUS the whole the best of the two. MR. and MRS.
AND JOSEPH. T , C a J i A
JAY s case or a STRADIVARIUS and two AMATIS,
prove how the greatest masters may occasionally turn out
commonplace and characterless instruments these are not
happy, though they are genuine specimens; the varnish
for STRADIVARIUS is especially poor. 84- is an interesting,
because late, weak, but undoubtedly genuine STRADIVARIUS.
It shows the old man's failing powers, especially in the
cutting of the belly, where the STRADIVARIUS curves are felt
without being properly carried out. 93, in the " Messie "
case is perhaps the finest JOSEPH GUARNERIUS in the world.
The head is noble stronger than the " Messie/' though less
delicate and beautiful ; the whole instrument is to the
"Messie" as a lion to a race-horse; the wood of the belly
is splendid, so is the work throughout, but the conception
is all for power and breadth, and the workman's tools were
probably inferior to those of STRADIVARIUS. 94, dated 1735,
lent by M. Louis D 'EGVILLE, is another superb JOSEPH
20
806 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
GUARNERIUS; 95 is a more coarse but characteristic specimen
of the same maker, the property of MR. AMHERST, dated
1734.
There are no less than five basses once the property of
BRAGONETTI, his favourite bass, a GASPAR DI SALO, of 1580,
is amongst them ; and a monster presented by
DRAGONETTI'S him to the DUKE OF LEINSTER, which would
require a ladder to climb up to its head, stands
alone, like the Pyramid of Cheops, looking down upon a
race of pigmies ; but besides size and ugliness it has no
special qualities. 109 is one of the finest Bergonzis I
ever saw, now the property of MR. HART. There are four
miniature violins for children, all fine and all genuine.
Two are by STRADIVARIUS, one by JOSEPH GUARNERIUS, and
one an AMATI. They are the exquisite bantams of the craft.
We must pass over several interesting specimens, but before
we leave these cases we must note a few sad sights.
First, the QUEEN'S AMATI has been dreadfully cut down :
it bears a raised pattern all round the belly, the old edge is
gone, and the purfling has doubtless been injured,
ZvOb
SOME LITTLE but is now much concealed by the raised work ;
136 is another fine AMATI cut down, and cruelly
cut down ; 139 is another AMATI treated in the same way,
but not so badly. Strange to say, 147, doubtless a NICHOLAS
AMATI, hung although the error was pointed out ; to the
SOME LITTLE MISTAKES. 307
end of the Exhibition urder the name of a MAGGINI viola !
A KLOTZ tenor, belonging to the DUKE OF EDINBURGH, was
called a STAINER, and hung as such. As it is an obvions
KLOTZ, and as this, too, was pointed out, it should have been
removed, especially as other violins, e.g. a spurious BERGONZI
(110), sent in by MR. J. W. JOYCE, was judiciously removed
after being hung. It is curious that the most glaring
blot of all in this remarkable collection should have been
suffered to remain to the close of the Exhibition without
a word of apology or explanation long after the spurious
instrument had been fully exposed, and its history given
in detail. I allude to the famous so-called MAGGIXI
violin, sent up by MR. J. W. JOYCE, and hung by the
judges.
This violin (No. 112), is now well known not to have
been made by MAGGINI 200 years ago, but to have been
copied by BERNHARD FENDT, about forty years ago. It
was bought by worthy MR. STANHARD, who fiddled on
it much in the Portsmouth Theatre. His widow adver-
tised it in the Clerkenwell News, and it was sold for a
few pounds to MR. NASH, a barber in the Commercial
Road. It then passed into the hands of REV. THOMAS
MAWKES. At last it got into the possession of MR. J.
W. JOYCE, and was offered with another spurious instru-
ment as a MAGGINI violin to the South Kensington
Museum Loan Exhibition. And there it hung, rejoicing
in its ill-gotten fame, like a second Claimant, in the teeth
20 *
308 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DEE AM.
of constant exposure and derision. "Where the deception
rests, it is not for me to say. These statements, which I
have repeated in print several times, have been received in
perfect silence by all parties concerned; and until that
silence of living witnesses is broken we must in honour
acquit everybody of fraud, and suppose that they have all
been taken in ; but the story is highly instructive, as
showing the care required in passing judgment on old
violins, and, I may add, the extreme unwillingness of self-
elected connoisseurs to admit that they have been taken in.
I now part with our "old violins " with feelings not
unmingled with regret; the very sums of money given
for them bear witness to their strange in-
definite value and importance. The owner of
PRICE8.
the "Messie" refused 600 guineas for that
unique gem, whilst 800 and even 1,000 guineas have been
offered by some who could not get their favourites for less.
And what is it that we pay for ? A little wood, varnish,
paint a few shillings would buy all the materials; the
simplest mechanical knowledge is sufficient to cut up and
put together the common fiddle, which is now sold for ten or
fifteen shillings, and looks to the novice so much more
desirable than the " Messie," or " Pucelle," though not
unlike them. Then what do we pay for ? We pay for what
no money can produce again ; we pay for conditions that
have passed away ; we pay for the inspiration of a matchless
PRICES. 309
workman, and a subtle soul infused into elements which seem
beggarly, but have become priceless ; we pay for the concen-
trated experience of not one life, but many, put into a curve
or a fluting for a few thin plates of wood fixed together
with an instinct that is dead, but that ere it died made those
slips of wood almost immortal. There is no reason why the
violin should ever wear out. It grows old with its perpetual
youth. It sings over the grave of many generations. Time,
that sometimes robs it of a little varnish, has no power over
its anointed fabric it need never be battered. The Joan
Carlino viol is 320 years old, and still almost without a
scratch. I wish to believe it genuine. The hard perennial
substance steeped in the silicate-like varnish, has well-nigh
turned to stone, but without losing a single quality of sweet-
ness or resonance. The violin is the only fossil which still
lives, and lives with a fulness of life and freshness that
contrasts mysteriously enough with the failing, sickly, and
withering generations of man. Even should mishaps bruise
or break its beauty, it can be endlessly restored it is never
fit for death ; it survives a thousand calamities ; nay, even
when cut up, dismembered, its several parts scattered
through a dozen workshops and through 500 years, live
on with a kind of metempsychosis in new forms, and
still cling strangely to their individuality, so that men,
taking up a patchwork violin, say it is fine, the front is
poor, the head is tame ; but then, see, here is a Stradivarius
back.
310 A SOUTH KENSINGTON DREAM.
Thus human in its power and pathos, and superhuman in
its immortal fabric, the violin reigns the prince of all instru-
ments, and in the hands of a PAGANINI, an ERNST, or a
JOACHIM, the joy and wonder of the civilised world.
Note on the Plate. It is next to impossible to draw a violin outline.
The diagram does not profess to be quite accurate. Even photography
seems to fail, as it cannot render truly the all-important variations of
surface. The difference between a Guarnerius and a Stradivarius would
hardly be appreciable in outline to an untrained eye. I have omitted to
give more than one head scroll, because of the subtlety ; and I have left
out the double bass, because of its size. The " Kits " are almost
dummies, used chiefly by dancing masters.
HOUSES. 311
V.
INTERLUDE
ON THE OBLIVION OF GREAT MEN.
*
THE pathos of places. Few people are quite insensible to it.
Religion consecrates Mount Olivet, Art crowns the Acro-
polis ; and Rome, that grave of Empires, still
' ' draws its crowds of pilgrims, who seem never
HOUSES.
weary of passing to and fro between the Palaces
of the Caesars to the Mausoleum of the Popes.
Yet there is a caprice in memory ; one is taken and
another left. As I write, CARLYLE'S house in Cheyne Row is
a"bout to be sold some say demolished. I had great diffi-
culty, a few years ago, in discovering MAZZINI'S house in the
Fulham Road. Germany is thought to be more careful of
such associations. I certainly notice the alacrity with which
statues of her poets, councillors, and musicians, are placed in
five town squares and parks ; but only the other day, when I
312 ON THE OBLIVION OF GREAT MEN.
was at Leipsic, I was struck by a singular case of oblivion
and neglect. I inquired at Leipsic for the house in which
MENDELSSOHN had lived and died. At last I found it. My
search was not so prolonged or so interesting as in the case
of the house of STRADIVARIUS at Cremona.
I found the house to be No. 21 Konig-strasse. The
memorial tablet mentioned by BAEDEKER was gone. I made
24i. many fruitless inquiries. Good MR. REUTER,
i VISIT w | 10 ii ve d there, at once left his office in the
MENDELS-
SOHN'S HOUSE, yard, and took me into the rooms where so
much of the loveliest music was conceived and written
between 1835-1847. The spacious flat of nine rooms all
belonged to FELIX MENDELSSOHN. MR. REUTER showed me
the large reception-room, and then took me into the sitting-
room and bed-room, in which last the composer died. It is
a little room, and those who remember the account of his
death, and the numbers of people who seem to have been
in and out of the room, can see at a glance how natural
this was supposing the sitting-room adjoining to have
been full of friends. The court-yard, now used for bales
of merchandise, and paved, was a garden in MENDELSSOHN'S
time, and he lived in the back of the house, and latterly
almost in two rooms, because of the quiet of the place.
The B,EUTERS have had the fabric restored, and partitions
removed, so that the house is substantially as MENDELSSOHN
left it; but the bustle and commerce of Leipsic has enor-
WHO REGARDS THE DEAD? 313
mously increased since 1847, and in more senses than one
the place knows him no more.
The world seems to have little need of the best of us
when we are gone. The house is let the photographs of
242. the dead disappear from the shop windows
WHO there's a new foot on the floor a new face
REGARDS
THE DEAD? i n the street a new name in all mouths.
BEACONSFIELD GARIBALDI CARLYLE EMERSON 'tis all
one ; your reputation must live in individual hearts : out of
all your deeds one or two only will be remembered ; of your
words, a few phrases ; of your books, a volume or so ; but
of a dozen that will continue to be printed only half that
number will be read, and at the end of a century or two,
perhaps a phrase or chapter only will survive. Few, indeed,
are the producers of whom it can be said, as we may say of
STRADIVARIUS he is more alive now in the hearts of men
than ever he was at Cremona.
After 200 years, every trace of his handiwork is eagerly
sought out. Bits of it are thankfully, and not always
honestly, secured. Time only increases our interest in
243. him, and enhances the value of his handicraft.
THE VITALITY E ver y fragment of wood which is thought to
OF 8TKADI- J
VARIUS. bear the mark of his chisel, is treasured like a
gem, and the waste of his workshop was found sufficient to
make the reputation of FRANCESCO BERGONZI and a host of
314 ON THE OBLIVION OF GREAT MEN.
imitators. The rumour of a new STRADIVARIUS is like the
rumour of a new RAPHAEL the civilised world competes for
the prize, and the sums which have been given for one of
his violins enormous as they may seem for a few thin
strips of wood varnished and glued together are probably
nothing to the sums that a fine example of the master will
fetch in the course of the next hundred years. Yet this
man sold his violins for four pounds apiece, and a consign-
ment of STRADIVARIUS violins sent to London in the last
century were sent back to Italy again, and no one seemed
willing to buy them, even at that moderate figure. I suppose
in these days the city of Cremona is known to the outside
world chiefly as the residence of STRADIVARIUS. I will now
relate what befell me when I made a pilgrimage to that
city in the year 1880 to seek for the house of ANTONIUS
STRADIVARIUS.
VI.
STEADIVAEIUS OF CEEMONA HIS HOUSE.
FOR years I had said to myself, I will go and see this house
at Cremona. The violin is the king of instruments.
STRADIVARIUS is the king of violin-makers. In
short space of about 130 years, from 1600
' to 1730, all the greatest violins in the world
were made. They sold the best of them for 10 golden louis,
MY THOUGHTS AT BKESCIA. 315
they sell the best of them for from 300 to 1,000 guineas.
I was at Brescia. There, before 1600, worked the fathers
of the violin the men who began to get rid, one after
another, of those lets and hindrances to tone, of those tubby
shapes and faulty proportions which belong to the ancient
Viol tribe. The names of MAGGINI and GASPAB m SALO are
for ever associated with those early experiments and with
Brescia. They paved the way. They struck the types,
violin, viola, violoncello, and double-bass out of the host
of nondescript viols, Viol da Gamba, Viole d'Amore, Violetti,
&c. &c. They decided upon the survival of the fittest on
what has actually survived they paved the way for Cremona.
Yet at Brescia their houses are unknown, there are no relics
of them. Their only relics are in the hands of a few
amateurs and a few museums. MB. TYSSEN-AMHERST has
perhaps the finest known Gaspar violin ; the Gaspar basses
are more numerous. DRAGONETTI'S monster Gaspar is in the
South Kensington the only instrument by any decent violin-
maker that is now in that museum. MR. ENTHOVEN has
perhaps the finest known Maggini. And so the Brescian
school, full of unique significance as it was, died and was
buried, but not before it had yielded up its secrets to the
AMATIS and GUARNERII who settled at Cremona. In the
great square of St. Domenico the AMATI set up their shop ;
later, next door to them, worked the GUARNERII. About
1760, the young man named ANTONIUS STRADIVARI, or
STRADIVARIUS, became, as we have seen, the devoted pupil
31G STEADIVARIUS OF CREMONA HIS HOUSE.
of NICOLAS, the greatest of the AMATI. ANDREW GUAR-
NERIUS worked in the same room with him. ANTHONY
copied NICOLAS'S work as closely as he could; for more
than twenty years he did little but copy.
These three names AMATI, the GUARNERII, STRADI-
VARIUS there be none like them ; these three shops,
almost next door to each other, opposite the big church
of St. Dominic there never were, nor will be, three
such shops. In them were made, in long quiet years of
peaceful, sunny labour, in steady and friendly rivalry, all the
great violins in the world the Joseph Guarnerius on which
PAGANINI played, now in the town-hall at Genoa ; the Stradi-
varius on which ERNST, and now MADAME NORMAN-NERUDA,
plays ; PIATTI'S violoncello ; JOACHIM'S and WILHELMJ'S
" Strads." And the charm of these Brescian and Cremonese
schools lies here, that in those days violin-making was a
living, growing art, as Gothic architecture once was. Each
maker was a discoverer with the enthusiasm and excitement
of the unknown upon him, working out problems of tone,
studying form, material, method, technique, with a view to
new effects; spending a life-time over it. I have already
shown at length how with STRADIVARIUS the art culminated,
all was done that could be done ; tone, sweetness, power,
sensibility, sonority, all was won; and then the decline
set in, love waxed cold, and men could no more reproduce
the old work than they could paint the old pictures, or
carve the old statues, or build the old cathedrals
NOT KNOWN. 317
So I said to myself at Brescia, I will go and see where
the great STRADIVARIUS lived for ninety-three years, and
loved and laboured with such absorbed and steadfast earnest-
ness and such wondrous cunning, that for 180 years hardly
a capital of the civilised world has ceased to do homage to
his power, a power that is felt and loved ever more and more,
and looked forward to year by year, as, with the return
of JOACHIM, SARASATE, NORMAN-NERUDA, WILHELMJ, the
mighty soul of STRADIVARIUS again speaks to thousands,
and with one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Everyone, I said, will know the house of STRADIVARIUS at
Cremona ; not even the magnificent cathedral, with its
almost unique fa9ade, is so famous as the name
245 ' of the great violin-maker : Cremona itself is
NOT K.JJOWN.
known to the outside world by nothing else.
So I got into a cab at the station.
"Drive," said I, "to the casa of ANTONIUS STRADIVARI. ''
" What casa?" said the man; "I do not know the name/'
" Not know the name of STRADIVARIUS, the great violin-
maker ! "
" I don't think he lives here; they don't make violins at
Cremona."
" Perhaps not," said I, a little nettled, " but they used to.
STRADIVARIUS, and JOSEPH GUARNERIUS, and the AMATI
made them."
" Upon my oath and the holy name of the Virgin^ I
318 STEADIVAEIUS OF CREMONA HIS HOUSE.
assure you, Siguor, they never made any violins at Cremona ;
you are mistaken."
The driver's temper was giving way, so was mine.
" Per Bacco ! " said I, as I thought under the circum-
stances I might swear by a heathen god ; " drive to the
cathedral ! "
So he drove.
The splendour of those red marble lions couchant, sup-
porting the marble columns both of the cathedral porch and
of the adjacent baptistery, the exquisite terra-
TO THE cotta work and double colonnaded facade, and
the great Campanile, at any other time would
have tempted me to linger, but not now. I entered and
cast but a languid eye upon the rich and ancient tapestries
and profuse decoration in mosaic and fresco which cover
every inch of the interior. The sacristan was lighting a
few candles in the darkness over the high altar. I made
towards him; he came down. .
" Can you tell me where STRADIVARIUS is buried ? " said
I, thinking it might be better to begin at the other end
this time.
" Oh, Signor," he said with a smile, " thank the blessed
saints and all the martyrs, STRADIVARIUS is not dead; the
avocat is alive and in good health ! "
" Ah, well/' said I, " but where would he be buried if
he were dead ? "
THE CITIZENS OF CREMONA. 319
" You mean, where is the family sepulchre ? I should
think it would be in the Campo Santo : it is not here. But
I can show you the house of STRADIVARI the avocat, it is
number three in the Corso Porta Roma," and he politely
came out of the cathedral and showed me the way.
I shall now get on the scent. This advocate is no doubt
a descendant ; he will be able to tell me all that is known.
I rang at the bell. Alas ! the advocate was out of town, gone
to Milan, so were all the family.
I got into another cab.
" Do you know the Piazza of Domenico ? " I said, this
time approaching the subject warily.
THE CITIZENS " There is no such place, Signer." This fairly
OF CEEMOKA. , j
staggered me.
" "Well," I said, " I know the church has been pulled down,
but can you show me where it stood ? "
"Ah! " said the man, "yes; they call it now the Piazza
Roma."
" 'Tis this abominable centralising spirit/' I growled to
myself ; f ' this conceited new country, this pert Italia Una ;
can they not leave Tuscany alone ? Piazza Roma ! forsooth,
what has Roma got to do with Cremona ? I don't mind
yonder VIA GARIBALDI, for he did as much for the north as
for the south ; and VICTOR EMANUEL may have his statue
here too, for he was a gallant Piedmontese ; but why is Rome
to come in and rub out the square sacred to St. Dominic,
320 STEADIVARIUS OF CEEMONAHIS HOUSE.
and destroy the very name dear to the memories and sacred
to the sepulchres of the AMATI and of STRADIVARIUS ? "
" Drive/' I said, " to that square/' and he drove.
Then I stopped, and stood up in the carriage, and accosted
my man much as follows : " My friend, do you not know
that in this ancient square of St. Dominic lived and worked
those great violin-makers who have made your city famous
throughout the world, and that here somewhere is still the
house of the greatest of them, STRADIVARI us? Can you
not show me that house?"
" Signor/' said the man, not wishing to appear ignorant,
"I think that the person you mean who made violins is dead.
He died some years ago ; I don't know his house, but here
is a man passing/'
" Pst ! stop him ! " I cried ; so he stopped him.
" We seek/' I said, " the house of the great STRADI-
VARIUS."
" Indeed/' replied this citizen of Cremona, tf I have heard
of him, but I fear he is dead. He made fiddles old fiddles.
Pst ! " said the man, stopping another passer-by. " Do you
know anything of one STRADIVARIFS, who made fiddles old
fiddles?"
I was still standing up in my carriage, and we now had
quite a little crowd round us. They were all Cremonese.
Some had heard of the advocate STRADIVARI, no one knew
anything of the immortal ANTONIUS STRADIVARIUS of Cre-
mona, although scarce 150 years ag'o his body had beeu laid
THE CITIZENS OF CREMONA. 321
in the little chapel of the Rosary (since pulled down with
the church), in all probability was still lying but a short
stone's-throw off' the little group that stood round my
carriage ; yet, not a soul knew his name.
At last one man stepped forward and said, " Sir, if STRADI-
VARIUS has been dead some time, and you seek his relics,
the antiquary round the corner might have heard of him/'
This was all I could gather.
" A thousand thanks ! '' I lifted my hat, the little crowd
lifted theirs.
" Drive/' I said, " to the antiquary ! "
He drove ; the antiquary was out, but his wife directed us
to a certain house in a side street not far from the square
of St. Dominic. 1 drew up in front of that house. Two
men looked out of one window, three girls looked out of
another.
"Is this," I shouted, " the house of STRADIVARIUS?"
" No, the advocate "
" Stop," I cried, " do not speak of him ; I seek not the
advocate I know where he lives I seek the house of the
great STRADIVARI us" (I turned to the girls), "a. maker of
violins ! "
" He doesn't live here, he 's dead. lie doesn't make
violins/' they said, laughing.
Then another roguish maiden, with eyes full of mischief:
" Yes, this is his house ; he used to live here ; he died
here."
2.1
322 STRADIVARIUS OF CREMONA. HIS HOUSE.
" Then, may I come up ? I want to see that room where
he died."
Another young lady here put her head out : two of them
were for letting me come up, and the others seemed neu-
tral.
"Look here!" said an elderly grey-headed man at another
window ; " If the gentleman wants anything, I will come
down wait. I know," said he, " whom you seek do not
attend to these light-headed girls you seek the house of
STRADIVARIUS, who made the famous violins ; he died more
than a hundred years ago ; his house is still on the Piazza,
nearly opposite where the old church of St. Dominic stands.
It is not here, but this is the interesting manufactory of
SIGNOR CERITO; we will show it you, too, if you have time."
" I pray you/' said I, " as my time is short, tell me where
is the casa of the great STRADIVARI."
" Signer, it is No. 2 Piazza Roma."
" I thank you from my heart," I said with a sigh of
iu finite relief and a low bow to all the heads out of the win-
dows. Then to my coachman, " Drive/' I said, " to No. 2
Piazza lloma." He drove.
A bright boy of the middle classes, well dressed and
polite, opened the door.
248. " Tell me," I said ; " I would see the rooms
I ENTER THE w h ere STRADIVARI USCQ to live."
HOUSE OF
STHADIVABICB. " Come in," said he; "I daresay they will
I ENTER THE HOUSE OF STRADIVARIUS. 323
let you come up ; there is nothing much to see ; he died
here."
I entered the narrow passage ; beyond it there was a little
square court-yard paved with old flagstones. To the left,
a narrow dark staircase led up to the second story. I could
no longer doubt that I was in the house of STRADIVARIUS
indeed, the only traditional direction I had come to Cremona
with was "in the Square of St. Dominico, opposite the
Fagade," and this house was quite near enough to correspond
to that description. At the top of the first flight, a beauti-
ful Italian girl made her appearance the boy said she was
his sister then an elder brother, then another boy. This
was all the family I saw it was enough ; they were
evidently intelligent tradespeople, and knew enough for
my purpose. The young man said, " The Professor "
" Who is the Professor ? " I asked.
"The Professor STKADIVARIUS," he answered, "who
made violins but ever so long ago inhabited these
rooms, and he died here, but we cannot tell which room
he died in."
" It matters not," said I ; " where did he work ?"
" Do you really want to see where he made the violins ?
We never go up there it is very dirty but if you will
see, you must ascend."
I went first, followed by the little family, who evidently
thought me quite eccentric, but were extremely polite
Higher and higher ; at last we came to the top of the house
21 *
324 STRADIVARIUS OF CREMONA. HIS HOUSE.
" It's higlier still," said the boy, and he pointed to
a little decayed ladder which at a glance I could see was
only used for certain fowls to roost on. It was very
dirty : but the boy went up, and I followed ; even the
pretty sister gathered up her skirts daintily and joined us ;
the young man came last. Through a trap-door covered
with cobwebs I soon emerged on to a sort of loft about
twelve feet square. It was still soundly roofed with tiles
and fine old beams and rafters. It was entirely exposed to
light and air on the north and the west, like an open barn,
but walled on the south, with two windows, and walled on
the east ; heavy rafters went all round, supported on solid
upright beams. " Here," said my host, " is where the Pro-
fessor made the violins."
I thought of the gorgeous studios in which our modern
artists and sculptors think it necessary to work. I looked
249. round, and I saw all the conditions which
J? A r ^; STRADIVARIUS required to produce those beautiful
VAKIUS 3 * *
WORKSHOP. crea tions miracles of carving, design, and subtle
cabinet-work which are still the delight of collectors who
seldom hear them, of players who find in them a soul of
matchless sensibility, of makers who copy endlessly without
ever being able to reproduce them, and of the whole musical
world which has long hung spell-bound upon their magical
vibrations.
I looked, and looked again. The genial and kindly
STRAD1VARIU&S WORKSHOP. 325
Italian family standing there with me observed that I
was absorbed and serious, and, with the kindest courtesy,
kept silent. And I saw out upon the north the wide
blue sky, and upon the west the wide blue sky just mel-
lowing to a rich purple, and flaked here and there with
orange streaks prophetic of sunset. Whenever STRADIVARIUS
looked up from his work if he looked north, his eye fell on
the old towers of St. Marcellino and St. Omobono; if he
looked west, the cathedral, with its tall campanile, rose dark
against the sky and what a sky ! full of clear sun in the
morning, full of pure heat all day, and bathed with ineffable
tints in the cool of the evening, when the light lay low
upon vinery and hanging garden, or spangled with ruddy
gold the eaves, the roofs, and frescoed walls of the houses.
Yes, after all, the conditions were good good for distil-
ling the rare gams in the natural heat ; good for soaking the
oil and varnish into the backs and bellies and ribs of maple
and deal ; good for drying leisurely day by day every
polished and moulded surface and smooth strip as it hung up
against the open blue sky, winnowed by the light winds as
they rose and fell with spicy odours from the distant Alps.
Here, up in the high air, with the sun his helper, the
light his minister, the blessed soft airs his journeymen,
what time the workaday noise of the city rose, and the
sound of Matins and Vespers was in his ears, through the
long warm summer days worked STRADIVAKIUS, drew in
the clear light his curves of strength and beauty, cut with
326 STRADIVARIUS OF CREMONA. HIS HOUSE.
free hand his scrolls, rounded and chiselled with a loving
eye those surfaces which resemble nothing so much as the
gentle and undulating curves and satiny texture of a smooth
human body. From this high laboratory, where the master
seemed so far above the earth, so near to Heaven, I said
it was meet that such melodious and seraphic ministers
should descend to be the delight and solace of our sad and
discordant world. Here was shaped the " Pucelle " ; here
was conceived the graceful, sweet, and ringing "Dolphin"
Strad. ; here, too, was formed and perfected that wondrous
violin which, in the hands of ERNST, and never since, drew
tears and laughter from enchanted multitudes, until it was
difficult to believe that the spirits of the dead were not
employing its pathetic vibrations to convey to mortals the
expression of their infinite longings and ineffable aspirations.
I suppose my eyes were raised involuntarily as I stood
facing the north, looking over a wilderness of roofs to
the great churches beyond. The young man
SSDQf
A NAIL IN evidently thought I was looking at the thick
A BF AM
beam that supported the roof on that side. He
climbed up so as to touch it, and felt along the inside.
"Here," he said, "the Professor hung up his violins. You
can see how old and worn is the beam ; and here and there
is a crooked rusty nail on which the violins hung."
A sudden thought worthy of a Vandal seized me : " I will
possess one of those nails." I at once invented several
"ADDIO/" 327
excuses for myself, some of them very good ones. 1st. No
one else cared for the nail. 2nd. It would simply rot there
and be lost. 3rd. Probably no one would ever notice it
again if left. 4th. No one would miss it. 5th, STEADI-
VAUIUS would not want it again. 6th. I wanted it myself.
This last was the best excuse I could think of. So I said to
the young man, "Whilst you are up there, do you know, I
should very much value one of those old nails; could you
get it for me ? "
"Certainly," said he, "if you want it; but it is so very
old and rotten, I can't draw it ; it is sure to break."
"Never mind," said I. He did not mind. The nail did
break, and I got all of it that .STRADIVARIUS ever used to
hang his fiddles on.
My mission was accomplished. I looked round upon that
simple, kindly, picturesque Italian family the young man,
his two young brothers, the pretty sister.
"What shall I say to thank you for your
"ADDIO!" J
kindness to me ? "
"Nothing," said the young man, laughing; "we don't
want anything : we are glad if you are pleased ; people
don't often come to see the house -just one or two have
been at long intervals."
"At least," I said, "let me give these nice little boys
something to buy toys with, for they opened the door and
have been such good little guides;" and I placed a few
328 STRADIVARIUS OF CREMONA. HIS HOUSE.
francs in the hands of the astonished little fellows, who
seemed doubtful; but the pretty sister laughed, and they
took the francs with many joyful salutations.
As 1 went down-stairs, I met the grey-headed man who
had told me of the house coming up. He had actually, with
true Italian curiosity, come all the way to see if I had really
gone there.
"So, so!" he said, "you have found the house where the
Professor once lived ? "
" Yes," I said ; " I have seen the house of STRADIVARIUS.
Addio!"
VIOLINS AND VIOLINISTS. 329
VI.
INTERLUDE
ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
WHETHER violins are due to violinists, or violinists to
violins, is like that other puzzle of whether the owl was
before the egg, or the egg before the owl. Thus
iSOSt
VIOLINS AND mucb, however, is certain : that until that special
modification of the viol which we call violin was
hit upon, there could not be a violin player; so we may
affirm that, in a sense, the violin preceded violinists. It
is equally certain that the growth of part- singing, and the
advancing art of modern music, rendered the players of
stringed instruments impatient with the tubby tone and
clumsy proportions of the old viols, and that, in order to
satisfy the increasing demand for tone and quality, the viol-
makers tried various experiments, until at last they hit upon
the violin type, improving their instruments to order as
330 INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
EUAKD and BROADWOOD were forced to increase the strength,
mechanism, and tone of their pianos to meet the extra-
ordinary, and apparently insatiable, requirements of LlSZT
and THALBERG.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA LULU, 1590, about whom I know
little more, was the first man who asserted, by his excellent
playing, the superiority of the new violin over
253> the old viols. With LULLI (1633-1687) the
LULLI.
" petit violon " became fashionable at the French
Court. LULLI was a cook, but the COMTE DE NOGENT,
hearing him play in the kitchen, brought him straight to
MADAME DE MONTPENSIER, and he was soon afterwards
installed as Court musician to Louis XIV. The "Petits
Violons du Roi" the name of a Court band organised by
LULLI soon became famous. LULLI himself was not only
a good cook and fine fiddler, but an excellent actor and a
merry fellow to boot.
MOLIEUE was very partial to him, and would say in com-
pany, when the conversation flagged, " Come, Battista,
make us laugh."
I find it impossible to make out wherein LULLI'S violin-
playing excelled that of his predecessors ; but as there were
during his life-time no two opinions on that question, I
must take it for granted in his favour.
With CORELLI (1653-1713) I touch firmer ground. We
CORELLL 331
can see at a glance that he was contemporaneous with tlie
finest period of STKADIVARIUS. As a contrast to
the French butterfly LULLI, CORELLI was " un
OORELLI.
homme serietix." His style was elaborate and
methodical; his music full of a fancy and variety which
even the stiffness of the old form cannot disguise. His
trios form the basis of modern chamber music, and
his concertos laid the foundation of the grand violin
style.
He was the first maestro who insisted on his band all
bowing in the same way. The fine effect thus produced is
seldom, if ever, heard in England. We must go to Vienna
and Paris to see that uniform Coup d'archet, which, in an
orchestra, is as striking to the eye as it is agreeable to the
ear. COKELLI met HANDEL at the house of that famous
patron of music, CARDINAL OTTOBONI, at Rome. The great
violinist took an odd view of HANDEL'S genius. "My dear
Saxon," he said to him, "your music is in the French style,
which I do not understand." CORELLI'S interview with
another illustrious professor was far from fortunate. He
seems at Naples to have met SCARLATTI and played one of
his adagios in C major instead of C minor. On discovering
his error, he was so much annoyed, that he left the town
immediately. He was very sensitive to rivalry, and had the
mortification like most great executive musicians who go
on too long to see younger artists preferred to himself.
Posterity has been more kind. His body lies close to that
332 INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
of EAFFAELE in the Pantheon. His tablet is inscribed with
the simple but conclusive motto :
" Corelli princeps musicorum."
Between 1640 and 1729 we had some very good violin
players in England. One BALTZAR led the king's (CHARLES
255. II.) band. His execution was wonderful. He
BALTZAR AND was a sa( j drunkard, and they buried him in
THE
BANNISTERS. Westminster Abbey. The BANNISTERS, father
and son, in 1672, proved that Englishmen could also play
the violin. They started a concert, " Is. admission, and
call for what you please." The fiddling was held at the
"George Tavern," Whitefriars. BANNISTER himself did
wonders on the flageolet, violin, and double-bass, and each
performer had his solo. The concerts took place in the
dark winter afternoons, and, by all accounts, the game
seems to have been fairly worth the candle.
TARTINI (1692-1770) added that element of romance and
fancy to violin playing, without which, in my opinion, the
most classical violinist fails as a true exponent
256 ' of his instrument or his art. TARTINI'S method
TAETINI.
was elaborate and concise. To him we owe that
attention to exact intonation which raises the violin strings
to an equality with the sensibility of the vocal chords. His
observation of the third sound which resonates sympatheti-
TART1NL 333
cally when the two upper notes of a chord of three are in
perfect time, and the great stress which he laid on this,
points to the perfection of his ear. He made his pupils
listen for the effect.
" If you do not perceive the third sound, your thirds and
sixths are not in tune," he would say.
TARTINI lengthened the bow. The violin bow grew until
it attained at last the PAGANINI and ERNST dimensions of
a yard long. At first it resembled more the chopper-like
implement still used for grunting on the double-bass. It
would be difficult to play the famous Trille du Diable the
best known of TAETINI'S compositions, which still holds the
concert-room with the old-fashioned bow used by CORELLI
or HAZZE. TARTINI'S own account, though a little stale, of
the way in which he composed his famous solo, may as well
be quoted, as it is not always that we can get a legend first
hand.
"One night, 1713," he writes, "I dreamt that I had
made a compact with the devil, who promised to be at my
service on all occasions. Everything I undertook suc-
ceeded ; my wishes were anticipated, and my desires always
surpassed. At last I determined to offer the devil my
violin, as I was anxious to know what kind of a fiddler he
might be. To my astonishment he played a solo so beauti-
ful, with such exquisite taste and finish, that never had I
heard or conceived of anything so lovely and marvellous.
Overcome with surprise and delight, I held my breath, and
334 INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
the effort awoke me. I seized my violiu in the hope of
recalling the magic strains in vain ! Still, a vague impres-
sion remained, which I instantly endeavoured to jot down.
My Sonata del Diavolo is the result. It is doubtless the
best of all my compositions."
Closely allied to the romantic element is TARTINI'S last
contribution to the progress of violin playing, his power of
exquisite "phrasing." He was the finest cantabile player
of his day. NAEDINI, his best pupil, carried on the tradi-
tion, for in the " adagio " he had no equal after TARTINI'S
death. TARTINI died at Padua, where he had lived for
nearly fifty years. He was a great philosopher, a great
lover of books, a mathematician, and a man of highly
religious and philanthropic character. He had seen CoRELLI,
lived long enough to admire HANDEL, play HAYDN, and
even hear MOZART. He left many pupils, amongst them
a lady MDLLE. DE SIRMEN who achieved a European
reputation, and was by some preferred to all his other
pupils.
GIARDINI (1716-1793) was famous for his "embroide-
ries." This, I suppose, consisted in those elegant flourishes
and cadenzas which, in the hands of PAGANINI and his
school on the violin, and in the hands of CHOPIN and his
school on the piano, received their latest and apparently
ultimate developments. Towards the end of GIARDINI'S
life, the great qualities of the STRADIVARI and GUARNERII
BOCCHERINI. 335
violins were beginning to assert themselves. The quartets
of HAYDN had immensely enhanced the dignity of the
violin. A demand for tone was rapidly arising, and GIAK-
DINI was as famous for the sweep of his bow and the
sonority of his tone, as for the delicacy and charm of his
" embroideries."
BOCCHERINI, by the enormous number of his composi-
tions, did much to spread the taste for chamber music.
A fragment or two of his compositions may
occasionally be heard at the Monday Popular
BOCCHERINI.
Concerts. He was a favourite with princes, and
composed nine works annually for the Royal Academy of
Madrid, where he died, aged sixty-six, in 1806, three
years before the death of HAYDN. The KING OP SPAIN
was fond of playing with BOCCHERINI, and the EMPEROR
OF AUSTRIA occasionally joined them in a trio. The
Emperor one day asked BOCCHERINI whether he played
better than CHARLES IV.; upon which the diplomatic musi-
cian replied, " Sire, CHARLES IV. plays like a king, but
Your Imperial Highness plays like an Emperor ! " It
would be impossible to say less, but difficult to say more.
It was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.
Most people are agreed that VIOTTI (1755-1824) was
the man who summed up in himself the progress of the
336 INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLATERS.
violin in the 18th century, and made possible the startling
258. developments which are connected with the
nom, names of DE BERIOT. and. above all. with PAGA-
KODE,
E BEKIOT. NINI an( j ERNST. VIOTTI prolonged further the
bow. In his days the internal bar supporting the old
violin bellies had to be strengthened to bear the increased
strain of the gradually rising pitch which gave such addi-
tional brilliancy to violin tone. His tone was powerful, his
style broad, and his phrasing noble.
He wrote music abounding in flowing melody and plea-
sant harmonies. His concertos long held the concert-room,
but were ousted by RODE, then by DE BERIOT, who, in his
turn, was displaced by ERNST, WIENIAWSKI, and VIEUXTEMPS.
DE BERIOT had a very considerable run of about fifty
years, for his music has only disappeared from concert
programmes within the last ten years, and is still popular
with novices.
PAGANINI'S music cannot be said to have displaced that of
any concert-room composer. Only a few of his concertos
were ever heard after his death, generally played by SIVORI,
and then no one pretended that they sounded the same as
when PAGANINI played them.
RODE, MORI, and LABARRE, were all pupils of VIOTTI.
MORI taught my old master, OURY, in his youth, and OURY
numbered amongst his pupils GEORGE MACFARREN, STERN-
UALE BENNETT, and the EARL OP FALMOUTH, an excelleut
amateur.
KREUTZER SPOHR PAGANINI. 337
I have now entered upon the golden age of violinists.
KREUTZER produced studies for the violin which are already
259. classical, and which, in my opinion, have never
KREUTZER, b een surpassed in excellence, variety, and even
SPOHR, '
PAGANINI. g ne mil sical taste. I have no intention here to
mention all the celebrated names of violinists which are,
unfortunately, to modern ears little but names ; only those
who serve as landmarks of the art deserve, as it were, a
bust and pedestal in the corridor through which I am now
passing, to contemplate at leisure the great figure which
stands at the end of it NICOLO PAGANINI.
I suppose that SPOHR'S violin school is likely to hold its
place as a comprehensive class book, though I arn told that
modern professors have a perfect mania for introducing
shorter manuals of their own invention. However, no one
can ignore the fact that SPOHR did more than any of his
predecessors to overcome the difficulties of chromatic scales,
octave, and chord-playing on the violin, although his curious
antipathy to harmonies and everything that savoured of
trickery on the violin left the field open to PAGANINI.
They were both born in the same year, 1784, and it is
pleasing to note PAGANINI'S generous appreciation and
sincere respect for SPOHR'S abilities, whilst it would be diffi-
cult to mention two artists more diametrically opposed to
each other in taste, temperament, and achievement. When
PAGANINI burst like a comet upon the musical world,
DE BERIOT had already reaped his laurels in England,
22
338 INTERLUDE ON SOME OLD VIOLIN PLAYERS.
and, notwithstanding the unique popularity of PAGANINI,
DE BEKIOT, by his compositions, as well as by the charm
of his phrasing, the roundness of his tone, and the exquisite
purity of his taste, retained his hold over the musical public
until his eye-sight began to fail him, and his nerve gave
way. He married MALIBRAN, who was bled to death by
the doctors, and he died at St. Petersburg, quite blind,
only in 1870. DE BERIOT'S name is intimately associated
with the great violin school of Belgium, over which the
lamented VIEUXTEMPS presided so ably for so many years.
I now wish to concentrate the attention of my readers
upon that imposing personality that strange uncouth figure
which stands out unique amongst the executive musicians
of the 19th century. Nothing like him seems ever to
have appeared before nothing approaching him as a solo
sensation, except LISZT, has appeared since. At one bound
he reached a goal of violin-playing to which, after an
interval of nearly fifty years, there seems to be no beyond.
He sounded the marvellous depths and resources of the most
marvellous of all instruments, and has apparently left
nothing for future explorers to discover.
A NEW APPARITION. 339
VIII.
PAGANINI.
WHO is this man who rises up suddenly in the world of
music, and whose fame passes with the brightness and
rapidity of a meteor through the civilised world ;
2oO.
A NEW who, at the moment when BAILLOT, SPOHR,
' RODE, and LAFONT seemed to have explored the
heights and depths of the violin, opened up new vistas
full of strange, unparalleled mysteries, and gave us glimpses
into a hell, purgatory, and paradise heyond the dreams
even of DANTE whose gaunt and supernatural figure
startled and fascinated the crowds that thronged about
him, a solitary man amongst men, but so unlike them,
that he seemed to belong to another race, and to discourse
in the weird music of another world who bowed to none,
yet was idolised by all whose engagements were nego-
tiated by kings and ministers who could spurn the prayers
of princes and grand duchesses, and yet received honour
at their hands, and was alternately decorated by the Pope,
and anathematized by the clergy ; who was this excep-
tional being reigning supreme for forty years without a rival
over the conflicting schools of Italyj Germany, and Prance,
22 *
340 PAGANINI.
at whose approach the greatest masters confessed themselves
vanquished who, although he set the fashions, infected
whole populations, invented a new school, yet, in his own
peculiar greatness, had no masters, no equals, and has left
no followers ? This man, who has stamped so indelible an
impression of himself upon the musical world, whilst his
name will survive as the synonym of wonder and mystery to
the remote ages this Hercules of the Violin was NICOLO
PAGANINI.
That a man's grandmother, or even his father and mother.
are of some consequence when he derives lustre or gain from
261. them of any kind, no one will deny ; but when
PAGANINI jj s h e( j s back upon them the only kind of
PERE ET
MERE. reflex glory which they are capable of receiv-
ing, the glory of an imperishable name, no one will
blame the biographer for skipping a few dull and stupid
antecedents.
.PAGANINI pere may have been a street porter, as some
pretend; or a small tradesman, as others, probably in the
right, affirm. He was a sharp man ; he was a cruel man ; he
did overmuch to develop his son's talents, and overmuch to
ruin his health, and, probably, is chargeable with having
destroyed his mental and moral equilibrium for life.
NICOLO'S mother was a sweet, amiable woman she loved
her boy, she believed in him, she often stood between him
and the rod, she prayed for him, and saw one night in a
SEVERE EARLY TRAINING. 341
vision a celestial being, who told her that the boy would
become the greatest violinist that ever lived. How far this
dream, which she lost no time in communicating to father
and son, increased the father's severity, and fired the boy's
ambition, we cannot tell ; but the dream seems to have been
a well-established fact, and years afterwards, when the
mother was old, and the son at his zenith, she reminded him
of it, as of an incident which had been- familiar to both of
them throughout their lives.
In these early days of boyhood were probably laid the
seeds of that idiosyncrasy of temperament which became at
262. once the glory and curse of his life. Little as
SEVERE we k now about the human brain, it is tolerably
EARLY
TRAINING certain that its particles move in physical grooves
and acquire methodical arrangements, which correspond to
what we call mental qualities and states of mind. Illness
may perpetuate some, and modify others. Great severity
may have a similar effect; recurrent outward action, for
instance, may create intense propensity in certain directions,
and thus impart the perseverance of mania to inward dis-
positions ; the nervous system at the same time, if it does
not break down, becomes over-developed, and is then
endowed with an almost supernatural sensibility. Some-
thing of this kind appears to have been the case with
PAQANTNI ; he was by nature very delicate. At four years
old he was nearly buried alive; he lay for a whole day
342 PAG AN IN I.
in a state of catalepsy, and was already placed in his
shroud, when he revived, but with a nervous system which
from that time forward showed signs of a strange and
unnatural susceptibility. By his own temperament, as
soon as he could hold the violin he was urged to an
intense and dangerous application for the least fault he
was severely beaten by his father, which seemed only to
increase an ardour which should, for his own sake, have
been rather moderated. Precocity was still further forced
on by starvation. Had it not been for his mother, he might
never have survived this brutal treatment. We shall see
by-and-by how lovingly he remembered her in the midst of
his triumphs.
PAGANINI was born at Genoa on the 10th February
1784. After exhausting his father's instruction, he was
263. taken in hand by SIGNOR SERVETTO, of the
TOE DESPAIK Q en0 ese theatre : then GIACOMO COSTA, chapel
OP HIS
MASTERS, master, taught him, and the child was often
seen playing in the Genoese churches on a violin almost
as large as himself; but, like MOZART before him, and
MENDELSSOHN after him, NICOLO was the despair of his
masters, who were in turn angry with his innovations,
and astonished at his precocious facility. In his ninth year
he appeared at a concert, and electrified everyone with
variations on the French air, La Carmagnole. This triumph
impelled his avaricious father to discover someone who could
THE DESPAIR OF HIS MASTERS. 343
further teach him ; the young talent was to be pressed and
squeezed to its utmost limit, in order to produce the golden
harvest.
At Parma lived the celebrated musician HOLLA. To
ROLLA was the boy taken ; but HOLLA was ill. Whilst wait-
ing in the ante-room little NICOLO took up a violin, and
played off at sight some difficult music which he found
lying on the table. The invalid composer raised himself on
his bed to listen, and eagerly inquired who the great master
was who had arrived, and was playing in his ante-room ? " A
mere lad ! impossible ! " but on PAGANINI'S making his
appearance as an humble pupil, ROLLA at once told him that
he could teach him nothing. Thence to PAER, who was glad
to make his difficult charge over to GHTRETTI, and this
master gave him three lessons a week in harmony and
counterpoint. It is not clear that this extraordinary genius
owed much more to anyone but himself his indomitable
perseverance and his incessant study. His method is to be
noted. For ten or twelve hours he would try passages over
and over again in different ways with such absorption and
intensity, that at nightfall he would sink into utter pros-
tration through excessive exhaustion and fatigue. Though
delicate, like MENDELSSOHN, he ate at times ravenously,
and slept soundly. When about ten he wrote twenty-
four fugues, and soon afterwards composed some violin
music, of such difficulty, that he was unable at first to play
it, until incessant practice gave him the mastery.
344 PAGANINL
In 1797 PAGANINI, being then thirteen years old, made his
first professional tour ; but not as a free agent. His father
264. took him through the chief towns of Lombardy,
^ANrf an( ^ n0 ^ unnatura l\y> prescribed the task and
GAMBLING, pocketed the proceeds. But the young neck was
already beginning to chafe against the yoke. In 1798 he
escaped, with his father's tardy consent, to Lucca, where a
musical festival in honour of St. Martin was going on. He
there gave frequent concerts, and was everywhere .met with
applause, and, what was more to the purpose, with money.
Surrounded by men of inferior talents, a mere inexperienced
boy, without education, without knowledge of the world,
with nothing but ambition and his supreme musical genius,
he now broke wildly away from all wise restraints, and
avenged himself upon his father's severity by many youth-
ful excesses. He gambled he lost he was duped by his
companions; but he made money so fast, that he soon
owned about 1,000. It is pleasant to think that he at
once thought of giving some of this to his father and
mother ; it is unpleasant to record that his father claimed,
and eventually got, almost the whole sum from him. But
it did not much matter now, for everything seemed literally
to turn into gold beneath those marvellous fingers, and bad
luck proved nearly as profitable to him as good.
By the time he had reached seventeen, PAGANINI was a
confirmed gambler. He had little left but his Stradi-
HOW HE LOST AND WON VIOLINS. 345
varius violin, and this he was on the point of selling to a
265. certain prince, who had offered him 80, a large
HOW UK LOST sum a t the beginning of this century even
AND WON
VIOLINS. f or a Stradivarius. Times have changed, and
in these latter days we think nothing of giving 300 for a
genuine instrument of the first class. But the reckless
youth determined to make a last stand for his violin.
ff Jewels, watch, rings, brooches/' to use his own words, " I
had disposed of all my thirty francs were reduced to three.
"With this small remains of my capital I played, and won
160 francs ! This amount saved my violin, and restored my
affairs. From that time," he adds, "I abjured gaming, to
which I had sacrificed a part of my youth, convinced that
a gamester is an object of contempt to all well-regulated
minds." The violin he narrowly missed losing was given
him by PARSINI the painter, who on one occasion brought,
him a concerto of extraordinary difficulty to read at sight,
and, placing a fine Stradivarius in his hands, said, " This
instrument shall be yours if you can play that concerto at
first sight in a masterly manner." " If that is the case,"
replied PAGANINI, "you may bid adieu to it"; and, playing
it off at once, he retained the violin. Easy come easy go.
Some years later, at Leghorn, being again in great straits,
he was obliged to part, for a time at least, with this same
Stradivarius; but this disaster was only the means of pro-
curing him the favourite Guarnerius, upon which he ever
afterwards played. In his need, Monsieur LIVRON, a dis-
346 PAGANINI.
tinguished amateur, lent him this splendid instrument, arid
was so enraptured by his playing that he exclaimed, "Never
will I profane the strings that your fingers have touched.
It is to you that my violin belongs." This violin is still
shown at Genoa under a glass case.
At the age of seventeen PAGANINI appears to have been
entirely his own master weak in health, nervous, irritable,
and excitable : his wild and irregular habits and
266.
A HESPirB pursuits were, at this critical age, threatening
FltOM TOIL. , i i 1 l
to hurry him to an early grave, when an event
occurred which, although but too characteristic of the
looseness of Italian manners, probably saved his life.
Suddenly, in the midst of new discoveries and unexampled
successes, PAGANINI ceased to play the violin. He retired
into the depths of the country, and devoted himself for
three years to agricultural pursuits, and to the society of a
lady of rank who had carried him off to her Tuscan estate,
and to the guitar. With the sole exception of the late
REGONDI, no such genius had ever been concentrated upon
this limited and effeminate instrument. But the lady's
taste ran that way, and the great violinist lavished for a
time the whole force of his originality and skill upon the
light guitar. He wrote music for it, and imitated it on the
violin, but seldom touched it in after life until quite the
close, although, as we shall presently see, he was able to
produce a prodigious effect upon it when he chose.
STUDY AND COMPOSITION. 347
These years of country life and leisure, during which he was
delivered from the pressure of crowds, the excitement of
public performances, and, most of all, the grinding anxieties
of life, had the effect of bracing him up in health, and
prepared him for that reaction towards intense study and
exhausting toil which left him without a rival the first
violinist in the world.
In 1804 he returned to Genoa, where he seems, amongst
other things, to have given lessons to a young girl of fifteen,
named CATHERINE CALCAGNO, who appears to
STUDY AND have caught something of his style, and to have
>N ' astonished Italy for a few years, but after 1816
we hear no more of her. And now the neglected violin
was taken up once again, but this time with maturer powers
and settled intentions. There is a strange thoroughness
about PAGANINI nothing which any previous musician
knew or had done must be unknown or left undone by
him; there was to be no hitting him between the joints
of his armour; no loop-hole of imperfection anywhere.
He now occupied himself solely with the study of his
instrument, and with composition wrote four grand
quartettes for violin, viol, guitar, and violoncello ; and
bravura rariations with guitar accompaniment. At the age
of twenty-one (1805) he made a second professional tour,
passing through Lucca and Piombino, and in one convent
church where he played a concerto, the excitement was so
348 PAGANINI.
great that the monks had to leave their seats to silence the
uproar in the congregation. It was at the end of this tour
that NAPOLEON'S sister, the PEINCESS ELIZA, offered the new
violinist the direction of the Court music, and gave him
the grade of captain in the lloyal Guard, with the privi-
lege of wearing that officer's brilliant uniform on state
occasions.
Between 1805 and 1812, whilst in the service of the
PRINCESS ELIZA, afterwards GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY,
2G8. PAGANINI probably reached his acme of power,
FEELINO j not Q f f ame jj e na( j f or y ears been at work
AFTER
EFFECT, upon new effects and combinations, but, at the
very time when each new exploit was being greeted with
frantic applause, he betook himself to an exhaustive study
of the old masters. Something he seemed to be groping
after some clue he wished to find. How often had he
thrown over VIOTTI, PUGNANI, KREUTZER, how often had
he returned to their works 1 All were found utterly in-
adequate to suggest to him a single fresh thought, and it
was nothing short of a new world that he was bound to
discover.
In studying the ninth work of LOCATELLI, entitled
L'Arte de Nuova Modulazione his brain was set suddenly
agoing in the peculiar direction of his new aspirations.
Every original genius seeks some such clue or point of
departure. Something in LOCATELLI'S method inflamed
PLAYING ON ONE STRING, 349
PAGANINI with those conceptions of simultaneous notes struck
in different parts of the instrument ; the hitherto unknown
management of the screws, in which the violin was tuned
all sorts of ways to reach effects never heard before or since ;
the harmonic flying out at all points, the arpeggios and
pizzicatos, of which more anon ; these which were in after
years brought to such perfection, were born out of infinite
study and practice, under the stimulating influence of the
GRAND DUCHESS and her Court.
It is at this season of his life that PAGANINI appears most
like other people ; the idol of the Court, untouched as yet
by any definite malady, occupying an official
vv*
PLATING os post, and systematically labouring to perfect a
' talent which already seemed too prodigious to
belong to any one man, all conditions seemed most favour-
able to his peace and pleasure, could they have only lasted,
but this was not possible. They continued until he had
achieved the last step in the ladder of consummate skill, and
no longer. Probably all his executive peculiarities were
developed at this time. It was at Florence, for instance (and
not in a prison), that PAGANINI first played upon only two
the first and fourth strings, and then upon one the fourth
string. Being in love with a lady of the Court, who
reciprocated his attachment, he gave out that he would
depict upon his violin a Scene Amoureuse ; the treble string,
we presume, was the lady, and the fourth string the f eutle-
350 PAG AN INI.
man. The emotional dialogue was carried on between the
two in a manner which fairly overcame the audience with
delight, and led to the GRAND DUCHESS requesting him to
try one string alone next time. How he succeeded in that
exploit is known to all the world, for he ever afterwards
retained an extreme partiality for the fourth string.
In 1808 he obtained from the GRAND DUCHESS leave to
travel. His fame had preceded him. Leghorn, where seven
270. years before he had forfeited his famous Stradi-
PROMGIOCS varius and won a Guarnerius, received him with
FACILITY, open arms, although his appearance was marked
by an amusing contretemps. He came on to the stage
limping, having run a nail into his heel. At all times
odd- looking, he, no doubt, looked all the more peculiar
under these circumstances, and there was some tittering
among the audience. Just as he began, the candles fell
out of his desk more laughter. He went on playing,
the first string broke more laughter. He played the rest
of the concerto through on three strings, but the laughter
now changed to vociferous applause at this feat. The beggarly
elements seemed of little consequence to this magician.
One or more strings, it was all the same to him ; indeed, it
is recorded, that he seldom paused to mend his strings when
they broke, which they not unfrequently did. Whether
from abstraction or carelessness he would allow them at
times to grow quite ragged on the finger board, and his
A NARROW ESCAPE. HIS APPEARANCE. 351
constant practice of plucking them, guitar-like, with the left
hand, as well as harp-like with the fore-finger of the right
hand, helped, no doubt, to wear them out rapidly.
At Ferrara both he and his violin met with a different
reception. A singer had failed him, and he had induced
a danseuse who had a pretty voice to come to the
A NARROW rescue. Some graceless fellow in the audience
hissed her singing, which caused PAGANINI to
take a revenge little suited to the occasion. In his last
solo he imitated the cries of various animals, and suddenly
advancing to the foot-lights, caused his violin to bray like
an ass, with the exclamation, "This is for him who hissed \"
Instead of laughter, the pit rose in fury, and would have
soon made short work of him and his violin, had he not
escaped by a back door. It appears that the country folk
round Ferrara called the town's people, whom they hated,
" asses," and were in the habit of singing out " hee-haw ! "
whenever they had to allude to them, hence the angry
reception of PAGANINI'S musical repartee.
We get but fugitive glances of the great artist during
this professional tour, but it is too true that at Turin he
was attacked with that bowel complaint which
272.
ins ever afterwards haunted him like an evil demon,
CE< causing him the most frightful and protracted
suffering, and interrupting his career sometimes for months
352 PAG AN IN I.
together. His distrust of doctors, and love of quack
medicines, no doubt made matters worse, and from this
time his strange appearance grew stranger, his pallor more
livid, his gauntness and thinness more spectral and grotesque,
whilst greatly, no doubt, in consequence of suffering, his
face assumed that look of eagle sharpness, sometimes varied
by a sardonic grin, or a look of almost demoniacal fury,
which artists have caricatured, and sculptors have tried to
tone down. Indeed, he must have been altogether an ex-
ceptional being to behold in the flesh. People who knew
him say that the figure which used still to be exhibited
at MADAME TUSSAUD'S, some twenty-five years ago, was a
remarkable likeness. He looked like an indifferently dressed
skeleton, with a long parchment face, deep dark eyes, full
of flame, long lank hair, straggling down over his shoulders.
II is walk was shambling and awkward, the bones seem
to have been badly strung together, he appeared as if he
had been fixed up hastily on wires and the wires had got
loose. As he stood, he settled himself on one hip, at a
gaunt angle, and before he began, the whole business
looked so unpromising, that men wondered how he could
hold his violin at all, much less play it !
It must have been at his first visit to Florence, before
his appearance was familiar, as it afterwards became, to the
inhabitants of that city, that we get one of those side-views
of the man which are more precious than many dates and
drier details.
A MEETING. 353
Slowly recovering from illness, PAGAN INI repaired to
Florence, probably in May of the year 1809. He must have
then lived in almost complete solitude, as he does
2T^
not appear to have been recognised there before
A MEETING.
the month of October, when he was officially
recalled to his duties by the late Princess, now Grand
Duchess, at the Court of Florence.
Those who have wandered in spring-time about the
environs of Florence, know the indefinite charm there is in
the still and fertile country, without the walls of the city.
Outside the gate of the Pitti, on the summit of a steep hill
stands Fiesole, bathed in clear air and warm sunshine.
How many an invalid has walked up that winding and rugged
path, gathering, here and there, a sweet wild-flower, resting
from time to time, to drink in the delicious air, until pure
health seemed borne back to the feeble frame upon the soft
and fragrant breeze.
Alone, on a bright morning, a tall, ungainly figure goes
slowly up the hill towards Fiesole. He pauses at times,
he looks round abstractedly. He is talking to himself out
loud, unconscious of anyone near him he gesticulates wildly
then breaks out into a loud laugh but stops suddenly,
as he sees coming down the hill a young girl, carrying one
of those large baskets full of flowers so commonly seen in
the streets of Florence. She is beautiful with the beauty
of the Florentine girls ; the brown flesh-tints mellowed
with reflected light from the white road strewn thick with
23
354 PAGANINL
marble-dust ; under the wide straw hat the free curls flow
dark and thick, clustering about her temples, and lowering
the forehead. Suddenly the large black eyes, so common
amongst the Italian peasants, seemed transfixed with some-
thing between wonder and fear, as they fall upon the uncouth
figure approaching her. In another moment, conscious of
the stranger's intense gaz?, she stands motionless, like a bird
charmed by a serpent; then she trembles involuntarily, from
head to foot. A strange smila steals over the pale and
haggard face of PAGANINI was he, then, conscious of
exercising any mesmeric power ? At times he seemed so
full of some such influence that individuals, as well as
crowds, were irresistibly drawn and fascinated by his
look.
But the strange smile seemed to unloose the spell, the
startled girl passed on, and the solitary artist resumed his
walk towards Fiesole.
Heavy clouds, riven with, spaces of light, v;ere driving
before the wind. Over the bridge Delle Grazie, up the
hill once more without the eates of Florence, we
274.
ix THE pass towards a ruined castle. A storm seems
imminent, the wind whistles, and howls round
the deserted promontory, the bare ruin that has braved the
storms of centuries stands up dark against the sky, and
seems to exult in the fury of the elements, so much in
harmony with its own wild and desolate look. But what
IN THE STORM. 855
are those low wailings? Is it the wind, or some human
being in anguish? The traveller rushes forward in a
cavity of the deep ruin, amongst the tumbled stones,
o'ergrown with moss and turf, lies a strange figure a
lonely, haggard man. He listens to the wind, and moans
in answer, as though in pain. Is he the magician who
has conjured up the tempest, and is the scene before us
all unreal? or has the tempest entered into his soul, and
filled him with its own sad voice? Indeed, as he lies there
his pale, almost livid face distorted, his wet hair streaming
wildly about his shoulders his uncouth form writhing with
each new burst of the hurricane he looks the very imper-
sonation of the storm itself. But, on being observed, hia
look becomes fixed the stranger insensibly recoils, and
feels awkwardly the sense of intrusion. If the strange man
is in pain he wants no help ; thus rashly exposed to the
weather, hardly recovered from his grievous malady, he may
well be actually suffering, but most likely he is merely
possessed for the time by certain emotions impressed upon
his sensitive and electric organization by the tempest from
without. He is drinking in the elemental forces which, by-
and-by, he will give out with a power itself almost as
elemental.
Some of us may have walked in the soft moonlight under
the long avenue (Cascine) that runs by the brink of the
rushing Arno straight out of Florence. We can re-
23 *
86 PAGANINL
member how the birds love those trees, and the broken
underwood beneath them. When the city sleeps
27o- the heart of those woods is alive, even the
BT NIGHT.
daylight birds are sometimes aroused by the
nightingales, as they answer each other in notes of sweet-
ness long drawn out, and tender raptures that seem to
swoon and faint into the still more tender silences of the
summer night. But suddenly the birds' song is checked
other strains of incomparable sweetness arise in the wood.
The birds are silent, they pause and listen: the notes are
like theirs, but more exquisite they are woven by a higher
art into phrases of inspiration beyond even the nightingale's
gift. The strange whistler ceases, and the birds resume,
timidly, their song ; again the unearthly music breaks forth,
and mingles with theirs. As we push apart the bushes, we
discover the same weird figure that but lately lay moaning
in the storm among the ruins upon yonder hill.
The person to whom we owe, substantially, the above
glimpses, met this extraordinary man again in the streets
of Florence a few days later. A merry party
ON THE of young people, laughing and shouting, pass
by towards the UtFizu we listen to their ringing
voices, occupied with themselves, and, youth-like, caring
for nothing at the time but their own gaiety, when sud-
denly the voices fall, the twanging of the guitar ceases,
a curious murmur runs through the merry throng, and
PERSONAL TRAITS. 357
not a pleasant murmur ; a tall, pale man, with eyes on
fire, -and strange, imperious look, has pushed brusquely
in amongst them. He seizes the guitar, and, sweeping
its strings with passion, causes it to wail like a zither,
then peal out like the strains of a military band, and
finally settle into the rich chords and settled cadences of a
strong harp. All resistance and murmuring ceases as the
astonished party follow him, spell-bound. His cravat flies
loose, his coat-tails wave madly to and fro, he gesticulates
like a maniac, and the irresistible music streams forth
louder, wilder, more magical than ever he strides, leaps,
dances forward with the guitar, which is no longer a
guitar, but the very soul of NicoLO PACANIXI. A few days
later still the mystery was cleared up. PAGANINI had been
officially called to Florence by the Grand Duchess to super-
intend the Court concerts, and the whole of the town was
soon ringing with his name.
About the age of thirty, at which time, as we shall
presently narrate, PAGANINI became free never again to be
bound by any official appointment the great
fjft
PERSONAL violinist had exhausted all the possible resources
of his instrument. From this time PAGANINI,
incredible as it may appear, seldom, if ever, played, except
at concerts and rehearsals, and not always even at rehearsals.
If he ever practised, he always used a mute. MR. HARKIS,
who for twelve months acted as his secretary, and seldom
358
PAGAN INI.
left him, never saw him take his violin from its case. At the
hotels where he stopped the sound of his instrument was never
heard. Tie used to say that he had worked enough, and
had earned his right to repose; yet, without an effort, he con-
tinued to overcome the superhuman difficulties which he hira-
Frorn a Bust by Danton, presented by Professor Ella to Mr. Haweis.
self had created with the same unerring facility, and ever
watched by the eager and envious eyes of critics and rivals.
In vain ! No false intonation, no note out of tune, no
failure was ever perceptible. The Times critic, reviewing
him in London some years before his death, says his octaves
PERSONAL TRAITS.
359
were so true that they sounded like one note, and the most
enormous intervals with triple notes, harmonics and guitar
effects, seem to have been invariably taken with the same
precision. In the words of a critical judge, M. FETIS, " his
hand was a geometrical compass, which divided the fingcr-
Frorn the same Bust.
board with mathematical precision." There is an amusing
story told of an Englishman, who followed him from place
to place, to hear him play in private, in the hope of dis-
covering his " secret." At last, after many vain attempts,
he managed to get lodged in the next room to the groat
360 PA GANINL
artist. Looking through the key-hole, he beheld him seated
on a sofa, about to take his violin from its case at last !
He raises it to his chin but the bo\v ? is left in the case.
The left hand merely measures with its enormous wiry
fingers a few mechanical intervals, and the instrument is
replaced in silence not even then was a note to be heard !
Yet every detail of rehearsal was an anxiety to him.
Although he gave a prodigious number of concerts, he was
always unusually restless and abstracted on the morning of
the day on which he had to perform. He would be idle fo 1 '
hours on his sofa or, at least, he seemed to be idle perhaps
the works were then being wound up before going to re-
hearsal he would then, before starting, take up his violin,
examine it carefully, especially the screws, and, having
satisfied himself, replace it in its shabby-worn case without
striking a note. Lastly, he would sort arid arrange the
orchestral parts of his solos, and go off to rehearsal. He
was very unpunctual, and on one occasion kept the whole
band waiting for an hour, and was at last found sheltering
from the rain under a colonnade, rather than take a cab.
This was in London. At the rehearsal there was always
the most intense eagerness on the part of the band to hear
him play, and when he came to oue of his prodigious
cadenzas, the musicians would rise in their seats, and lean
forward to watch every movement, and follow every sound.
PAGANINI would then just play a few common-place notes,
stop suddenly, and, turning round to the band, wave his
PERSONAL TRAITS. 361
bow, with a malicious smile, and say, " Et ceetera,
Messieurs ! " If anything went wrong he got into a
paroxysm of fury ; but when things went well he freely
showed his satisfaction, and often exclaimed, "Bravissimo
sieti tuti virtuosi ! " He could be very courteous in his
manner, and was not personally unpopular with his fellow-
musicians, who stood greatly in awe of him. No one ever
saw the principal parts of his solos, as he played by heart,
for fear of the music being copied. The rehearsal over, he
carried even the orchestral parts away with him. He
would then go straight home, take a light meal, throw him-
self on his bed, and sleep profoundly until his carriage
arrived to take him to the concert. His toilet was very
simple, and took hardly any time ; his coat was buttoned
tightly over his chest, and marked the more conspicuously
the impossible angles of his figure ; his trousers hung loose
for trousers of the period; his cravat was tight about his
neck. He sweated so profusely over his solos, that he
always carried a clean shirt in his violin trunk, and changed
-his linen once at least during the concert. At concert time
he usually seemed in excellent spirits. His first question on
arriving was always, " Is there a large audience ? " If the
room was full he would say, " Excellent people ! good,
good ! " If by any chance the boxes were empty he would
say, " Some of the effects will be lost." He kept his
audience waiting a long time, and he would sometimes say,
"I have played better," or "I have played worse," and
362 PAGANINI.
occasionally his first solo would be more effective than his
last. After once or twice trying the music of KREUTZER
and RODE in public, he decided never to play any but his
own, and said to his secretary, Mil. HARRIS, " I have my
own peculiar style ; in accordance with this I regulate my
compositions. I had much rather write a piece in which I
can trust myself entirely to my own musical impressions."
" His art," observes M. FEUS, "was an art born with him,
the secret of which he has carried to the grave."
Some have pretended that, as PAGANINI never cared to
play except in public, his art was nothing to him but a
means of making money. It would be, perhaps,
278.
ABT AND nearer the truth to say that his art was so
entirely himself, that he did not require, except
at seasons, and chiefly for others, to give it outward ex-
pression. He needed no more to play than BEETHOVEN
needed to hear. Happier than BEETHOVEN, he was not
deprived of the power of realising outwardly the art in
which he inwardly lived ; but probably the creations of
his spirit infinitely outstripped the utmost limits even of
his executive powers, until in his eyes they seemed, after
all, the faint and inadequate symbols of his wild and
inspired dreams. There are times when the deepest feeling
is the most silent music may come to the aid of words ;
but there is a point at which music itself is a mere beggarly
element. What made PAGANINI so exceptionally great was
ART AND LIFE. 363
the portentous development, the strength and independence
of the emotional fountain within. The whole of life was to
him nothing but so many successions of psychological heat
and cold. Incidents immediately became clothed with a
psychic atmosphere perhaps the life of emotion was never
so completely realised in itself, and for itself, as in the soul-
isolation of PAGANINI. That life, as far as it could be
individually expressed, was uttered forth by his violin. On
his concert bills he used to put,
Paganini fara sentire il suo violino.
What the tempest had told him his violin would proclaim ;
what the summer night had whispered was stereotyped in
his soul, and the midnight song of birds came forth from
the Cremona depths at his bidding. Nor was there any
phase of passion unknown to him, save, alas ! the phase of
a pure and lasting love. His wild soul had early consumed
itself with unbridled excesses, and although in his maturer
years he grew more sober in such matters, it was not before
he had fathomed the perilous depths of more than one
grande passion, and made himself master of all its subtle
expressions.
When, then, we are told that he seldom played, we must
remember that his inmost life was itself one vast cosmos of
imaginary concord and discord he was music, although
only at times " the tides of music's golden sea " would burst
forth with incomparable splendour, and gather a kind of
364 PAGANIXI.
concrete existence in sound, yet to him his own inspirations
were as real perhaps more real without it. For music
exists apart from physical vibrations, nor can such vibra-
tions, however subtle and varied, express it wholly as it
lives in the creative heart. The ear of the soul hears what
no ear of sense can hear, and a music fairer than anything
on earth is often sounding in the spirit of the true musical
seer. Nay, does he not feel, like BEETHOVEN, the bitter
descent when he formulates his thoughts upon paper, strikes
the keys, or sets in vibration the strings which after all are
but feeble' apologies for the ideal beauty, the intense, the
subtle, or exalted harmonies of the inner life ?
Shall we now assist at one of PAGANINI'S performances?
How many descriptions have been written, and how inade-
quate ! It is hardly possible to do more than
ENTKR describe a few salient peculiarities. But even
our pale sketch would be incomplete without
such an attempt.
Enter PAGANINI a shudder of curiosity and excitement
runs through the crowded theatre, the men applaud, the
women concentrate a double-barrel fire of opera-glasses
upon the tall, ungainly figure that shuffles forward from the
side scenes to the foot-lights, with such an air of haughti-
ness, and yet so many mechanical bows. As the applause
rises again and again, the apparition stands still, looks
round, takes in at a glance the vast assembly. Then,
ENTER . PA GA NINL 365
seizing his violin, he hugs it tightly between his chin and
chest, and stands for a few seconds gazing at it in motion-
less abstraction. The audience is now completely hushed,
and all eyes are riveted upon one silent and almost gro-
tesque form. Suddenly PAGANINI raises his bow and dashes
it down like a sledge-hammer upon the strings. The open-
ing of the concerto abounds in solo passages, in which he
has to be left almost without accompaniment ; the orchestra
is reserved for the tuttis and slight interludes. PAGANINI
now revels in his distinctive and astonishing passages,
which hold the audience breathless. At one time torrents
of chords peal forth, as from some mimic orchestra ; har-
monic passages are thrown off with the sharpness and
sonority of the flute accompanied by the guitar, indepen-
dent phrases being managed by the left hand plucking the
strings, whilst the right is playing legato passages with the
bow. The most difficult intervals are spanned with ease
the immense, compass-like fingers glide up and down every
part of the key-board, and seem to be in ever so many places
at once. Heavy chords are struck indifferently with the
point or heel of the bow, as if each inch of the magic wand
were equally under control; but just when these prodigious
feats of skill are causing the senses to reel with something
like a painful strain, a low, measured melody steals forth
and penetrates the souls of all present, untilsome of the
audience break out into uncontrollable applause, whilst
others are melted to tears, overpowered by the thrilling
3G6 PAGANINI.
accents. Then, attenuated as it were to a thread but still
distinctly audible and resonant the divine sound would die
away ; and suddenly a grotesque flash of humour would
dart up from a lower sphere and shift the emotional atmo-
sphere, as the great maestro too soon dashes, with the im-
petuosity of a whirlwind, into the final "rondo" or "moto
perpetuo."
PAGANINI was not inexorable about encores he was
always gratified by applause. After the concert the people
often waited outside to accompany him to his hotel. He
seemed delighted with this kind of homage, and would go
out at such seasons and mix freely with them ; but he was
often quite inaccessible, and bent upon absolute seclusion.
Let us now resume the chronological narrative. Towards
the end of 1812, PAGANINI quarrelled with his royal
patroness, the GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY.
280.
HIS INDE- She had given him leave, as above mentioned,
to wear at Court the uniform of captain of the
body-guard, and one ni^ht he appeared in the orchestra
attired in this splendid costume. The Duchess seems to
have thought this inappropriate, and sent word desiring
him to change his uniform for an ordinary dress. The
offended artist declined point-blank, and that evening threw
up his appointment and left the Florentine Court and all
its works for ever. It is not at all improbable that PAGA-
NINI, who could now command any sum of money, had
PAGANINI AND SPOIIR. 367
grown tired of official duties, which could no longer shed
any new lustre upon him, and that, longing to be free, he
gladly availed himself of the first ready pretext for flight.
In vain his royal mistress sent after him, imploring him to
return. PAGANINI was inexorable, and it was even whis-
pered that the Duchess's entreaties were prompted by a
feeling still more tender than the love of music a feeling
which PAGANINI had ceased to reciprocate.
PAGANINI was very fond of Milan, and he stayed there
during the greater part of 1813. He visited that city three
times in five years, staying often for several months, and
giving in all thirty-seven concerts, most of them at the
Scala.
It was in 1814 that he first made the acquaintance of
ROSSINI at Bologna. The great composer, like every other
connoisseur, regarded him with admiration and astonish-
ment, and a friendship was then begun which was strength-
ened when the two celebrities met in 1817 at Rome, and in
1831 at Paris.
PAGANINI treated his fellow -musicians and rivals with
simple and unaffected courtesy. He expressed his great
281. admiration of SPOHil's violin-playing, and he
PAGANINI wen t all the way from Genoa to Milan to
AND SPOHR
AND LAFONT. ^ear LAFONT. When they met, LAFONT pro-
posed that they should give a concert, in which each
should play a solo. "I excused myself," says PAGANINI,
368 PAGAN1NL
"by saying that such experiments are always impolitic,
as the public invariably looked upon them as duels.
LAFONT, not seeing it in this light, I was compelled to
accept the challenge." Commenting upon the results, he
added with singular candour and modesty : " LAFONT pro-
bably surpassed me in tone, but the applause which followed
my efforts convinced me that I did not suffer by com-
parison." Although usually anxious, more for the sake
of others than for himself, to avoid such contests, he
never declined them ; and a similar trial of skill took
place between him and the Polish violinist, LAPPJNSKF,
in 1818, at Plaisance, the two artists remaining excellent
friends.
At this time PAGANINI'S health seems to have been in an
unusually critical condition. We have noticed that he
seldom consulted doctors, and when he did so
OQO
he was not in the habit of following their advice :
HIS HEALTH.
but his credulity was worse than his scepticism.
lie dosed himself immoderately with some stuff called
" Leroy " ; he believed that this could cure anything. It
usually produced a powerful agitation in his nervous system,
and generally ended in upsetting the intestinal functions.
Sometimes it seems to have deprived him of the power of
speech.
In 1816 he went to Venice, where he seems fairly to
LETTER FROM HIS MOTHER. 369
have collapsed after giving a few concerts. However, in
283. the following year (1817) he was much better,
FROM^ifis an ^ wen t to Genoa to see his mother, taking
MOTHER. ]\/[ii an en rou te. He has been called avaricious,
suspicious of his kind, and devoid of natural affection.
He, no doubt, loved money, and had a general distrust of
his friends, but it is certain that he was attached to his
mother, and took care to supply her with every comfort.
She writes to him some years later :
I am delighted to find that after your travels to Paris and London,
you purpose visiting Genoa expressly to embrace me. My dream has
been fulfilled, and that which God promised me has been accomplished
your name is great, and Art, with the help of God, has placed you in
a position of independence. We are all well. In the name of all your
relations I thank you for the sums of money you have sent. Omit
nothing that will render your name immortal. Eschew the vices of
great cities, remembering that you have a mother who loves you affec-
tionately. She will never cease her supplications to the All-powerful
for your preservation. Embrace your amiable companion for me, and
kiss little Achille. Love me as I love you.
Your ever- affectionate mother,
THERESA PAGANESI.
The " amiable companion '' seems to have been a canta-
trice, ANTONIA BLANCH i DI COMO, with whom he appears to
have lived at one time, and who bore him his only son, " the
little Achille."
In the same year, 1817, he arrived in Rome in time for
the Carnival, where he excited the greatest enthusiasm.
24
370 PAG AN IN I.
He was frequently to be found at the palace of
DE KAUNIIZ. the Austrian Ambassador, where he
284.
VISIT TO met all the great people in Rome, and among
them M. DE METTERNICH, who did his utmost
to persuade him to visit Vienna. From this time PAGA-
NINI determined, sooner or later, to visit the principal
cities in Germany and France, but the state of his health
was still very precarious. In 1818-19 he gave concerts
at Verona, Plaisance, Turin, and Florence, after which he
visited Naples for the first time. His advent had been
long looked for with feelings of jealous expectation and
distrust. The chief professors and musicians of the place,
who had never heard him, were not very favourably dis-
posed. They, however, gave him a reception, on which
occasion a piece of music was casually placed before
him, full of the most ingenious difficulties that could be
devised. PAGANINI was not unaccustomed to this kind of
trap, and upon being requested to play it at sight, he
merely glanced at it and played it off with the greatest
ease.
But he had even worse foes than the professors. He
seems to have got into damp apartments close under
285. St. Elmo, and his lungs, at no time very strong,
noiuMAx now s h owe( j unmistakable signs of consumption.
TREATMENT.
TRAVELS. The landlord, fearing that he would die in his
house, actually turned him and all he possessed out into
INHUMAN TREATMENT. TRAVELS. 371
the street, where his friend, CIANDELLI, happening to
come by at the very nick of time, administered a sound
thrashing to the brutal host with a stick, and took the
invalid artist to a more comfortable lodging. In 1820
he returned to his favourite city, Milan, where he founded
a musical society, conducted several concerts, and received
various crowns, medals, and decorations. In December
of the same year he returned to Rome, and in the fol-
lowing year, 1821, paid a second visit to Naples, giving
concerts at the Fondo and the Theatre Nuovo. At the
end of the year he crossed over to Sicily, but the people
of Palermo hardly appreciated him ; and in 1822 he is
again at Venice and Plaisance. From thence he would have
gone straight to Germany, in accordance with the proposals
of METTERNICII ; but on his way to Pavia, in 18.23, he was
attacked by his old complaint, and for some time it did net
seem likely that he would recover. He was advised to go
to Genoa for rest, and whilst there he recovered sufficiently
to give concerts at the Theatre St. Augustine, when the
prophet in his own country for once attracted enthusiastic
crowds. The Milanese, who had never expected to see him
alive again, gave him an enthusiastic reception at the Scala,
on the 12th of June 1824. He seems to have been still
unable to tear himself away from Italy, for in the same
month he returned to Genoa, then passed to Venice, and in
1825 he was at Trieste. Then he proceeded, for the third
e.; to Naples, and going over to Palermo, for the second
24 *
372 PAGANINI.
time, lie now met with a most astonishing success. He
remained in Sicily for a whole year, and seems in this
delicious climate to have recovered his health sufficiently to
undertake a long professional tour. He was then detained
in Italy for nearly two years more, for in 1826 he visited
again Trieste, Venice, and gave five concerts at Rome. In
1827 he was decorated by POPE LEO XII. with the Order
of the Golden Spur. He then repaired to Florence, where
a disease in one of his legs stopped his progress for
several months. It was only in the spring of 1828 that
he went on to Milan, where he at length gave his fare-
well concert, before starting on his long-projected visit to
Vienna.
To dwell upon the reports of his first appearance at
Vienna would be only to repeat what ha& already been
said. "The first note that he played on his
286. 5 J
TRIUMPHS Guarnerius," writes M. SCHILLING in the Lexique
Universel de Musique, "indeed, from his first
step into the room, his reputation was decided in Ger-
many. Acted upon, as by an electric spark, a brilliant
halo of glory appeared to invest his whole person, he
stood before us like a miraculous apparition in the
domain of Art ! " He gave concerts in the capital of
Austria on the 13th, IGth, and 18th of April 1828. The
greatest players and musicians from all parts flocked to hear
him. MAYSEDER, JANSA, SLAWICH, STREBINGER, BOHAI,
TRIUMPHS AT VIENNA. 373
united in extolling the new prodigy. In a very few days
Vienna seemed to be turned upside down no class of
people was unmoved by the presence of this extraordinary
man. The newspapers were full of verses and articles on
PAGANINI. Cravats, coats, gloves, hats, shoes, and even
cigar-cases and snuff-boxes everything was now a la
Paganini. The fashionable cooks called new dishes by his
name; any great stroke at billiards was a coup a la
Paganini.
He stayed several months at Vienna, but time did not
injure his popularity ; his talent bore the most critical
inspection all round, he was at once colossal in the breadth
and majesty of his effects, and microscopic in the perfection
and subtlety of his details. At the acme of his fame he
left Vienna, and commenced a tour through Austria,
Bohemia, Saxony, Poland, Bavaria, Prussia, and the
Rhenish Provinces. Prague was the only city which failed
to appreciate him. There was a stupid rivalry, of which
we find traces in the days of MOZART, between Vienna and
Prague, and it was generally understood that whoever
was applauded at Vienna was to be hissed at Prague, and
vice versa. But on reaching Berlin the great artist was
received with such an ovation, that he is said to have
exclaimed, on his first appearance, " Here is my Vienna
public \"
From this time to the end of his life, the wildest stories
374 PAGANINI.
began to be circulated about him, chiefly in the Italian and
French newspapers ; but the Leipzig Gazette
28 /
PAOANINI du Monde EUyant cannot be held quite blame-
less, for it inserted one of the most extravagant
of these tales. One man gravely affirmed that PAGANINI'S
miracles of skill were no longer to be wondered at, because
he had seen the devil standing close behind him moving
his arms for him. Another eye-witness wrote that he had
for some time observed a beautiful woman at PAGANINI'S
concerts; he went to the theatre in the hope of again
seeing her on the occasion of PAGANINI'S last perform-
ance. The % master appeared, played divinely; the house
was crammed, but where was the lady ? Presently ia
one of the soft pauses a deep sigh was heard, it proceeded
from the beautiful lady; tears were streaming down her
cheeks, a mysterious person was seated by her side, with
whom PAGANINI exchanged a ghastly smile ; the lady
and her cavalier soon rose ; the strange cavalier grasped
her hand she grew deadly pale ; they proceed out of the
theatre; in a narrow by-path stands a carriage with coal-
black steeds the horses' eyes seem on fire the two enter,
the carriage vanishes where, apparently, there is no road
at all, the inference of all which is that PAGANINI was in
league with the devil ! It is strange but true that these
absurd legends gained some credence amongst the ignorant
populace of Italy and France, though they were probably
laughed at in Germany.
PAGANINPS MORALS. 375
But other stories of a different kind annoyed him far
more. He was a ruffian who had murdered one mistress,
and decamped with another man's wife ; he was
288.
I'S an escaped convict ; he was a political busy-body.
He was a spy, a thief, an immoral swindler; he
had been in prison, it was said, for years, and had thus learned
his skill upon one string, all the others having got broken.
It is necessary, even at this time of day, to give a distinct
denial to this last legend. PAGANINI'S morals were not
above, but they were not below, the average of the somewhat
dissolute state of society in which it was his misfortune to
have been born and bred. He never committed a murder,
or fought a duel, or betrayed a friend, or left without provi-
sion those whom he had given just claims upon him. As to
politics, he knew nothing and cared nothing for them ; and
he never read the newspapers except when they contained
something about himself. In Paris they pasted up a coarse
woodcut of PAGANINI chained in a dungeon about the walls
&nd hoardings of the city. PAGANINI describes himself as
having stood before it in mute astonishment, until a crowd
gathered round him, and, recognising the likeness, mobbed
and hustled him in the most inconvenient manner. It was
these reports that he afterwards bitterly complained of, and
M. FETIS, at his request, drew up a letter, which was after-
wards published throughout Europe, in which the aggrieved
violinist vindicates his character from the current calumnies.
His protestations, however, were far from stilling the
376 PAGANINI.
rumours, and, wlieii he arrived in London, some years later,
there was no absurd and extravagant tale about him that
was not eagerly caught up and circulated throughout the
length and breadth of the land. A lesser man might have
courted this sort of notoriety, but PAGANINI, who could do
without it, was intensely annoyed and wounded. We cannot
follow the great violinist in detail through his German cam-
paign, in the years 1828-29-30, but some notion of his way
of life may draw his personality a little closer to the reader
ere we prepare to greet him on our own shores.
Ill health, at times acute suffering, which turned his pale
bony face to a green livid hue, an intensely susceptible
289. nervous system, an outward life alternating
PAGANINI'S between scenes of highly-wrought excitement.
TEMPERA-
MENT. amazing exertion, and fitful repose these causes
combined to produce a character singular for its mingled
abstraction and plasticity. At times he seemed in the
body, at other times out of the body sometimes he appeared
to be only semi-conscious of life ; at other times more
intensely conscious than any dozen people put together.
Physical causes acted at times oddly and instantly upon his
brain; at others they found him like stone. He was not
always open to impressions, which at certain moments would
find him so receptive that he became the utter incarnation
of them. He was full of contradictions, which he cared
little to explain either to himself or to others. He travelled
PAGANINl'S TEMPERAMENT. 377
with the utmost speed from place to place ; in the hottest
weather he would have all the carriage windows closed.
Although latterly his lungs affected his voice, which became
thin and feeble, he delighted to talk loudly when rattling
over the roads ; the noise of the wheels seemed to excite
him, and set his brain going. He never entered an inn
on the road, but would sit in his carriage until the horses
were ready, or walk up and down wrapped in his great
cloak, and resent being spoken to. Arrived at his hotel,
he would throw all his doors and windows open, and take
what he called an air bath ; but he never ceased to abuse
the climate of Germany, and said that Italy was the only
place fit to live in. His luggage was extremely simple
a small napkin might have contained the whole of his
wardrobe a coat, a little linen, and a hat-box a small
carpet bag, a shabby trunk, containing his Guarnerius
violin, his jewels, a clean shirt, and his money that was
all. He carried papers of immense value in a red pocket-
book, along with concert tickets, letters, and accounts.
These last no one but himself could read, as he knew
hardly any arithmetic, and calculated, but with great
accuracy, on some method of his own. He cared little
where he slept, and seldom noticed what he ate or drank.
He never complained of the inns every place seemed much
alike to him out of Italy; he detested them all equally.
He seldom noticed scenery, or paid attention to the
sights of foreign towns. To himself he was the only
378 PAGANINI.
important fact everywhere. He often started without food
in the early morning, and remained fasting all day. At
night he would take a light supper, and some camomile
tea, and sleep soundly until morning. At times he ate
ravenously. He remained taciturn for days, and then he
would have ail his meals sent up to his room ; but at
some hotels he would dine at the table d'hote, and join
freely in conversation. He lay on his sofa doing nothing
the greater part of every day; but when making plans
for the publication of his works or the founding of a musi-
cal institution, which at one time occupied much of his
thoughts, he would stride up and down his room, and talk
in a rapid and animated manner. After dinner he habitu-
ally sat in his room in total darkness until half-past ten,
when he went to bed. Sometimes from sixty to eighty
people, eager to see him, would wait upon him at his hotel
in the course of the day. When compelled to see visitors,
he was polite ; but the intrusion of strangers fatigued and
annoyed him, and he often refused himself to everyone. He
would bolt his door, and not take the least notice of any
knocks.
He would sit for hours almost motionless in a kind of
trance, and apparently absorbed in deep thought; but he
was not always averse to society. He was fond of conver-
sing with a few friends, and entered into whatever games
and recreations were going on with much zest; but if any-
one mentioned music, he would relapse into a sullen silence,
AT PARIS. 37S
or go off to some other part of the room. He disliked
dining out ; but when he accepted he usually ate largely of
everything on the table, after which he was generally
attacked by his old bowel-complaint. At the time, how-
ever, he would eat and drink largely without any incon-
venience. Although he mixed freely with the world, like
CHOPIN, he was a solitary man, and reserved to the last
degree. No one seemed to be in his confidence. He had
an excellent memory yet certain faces seemed to pass from
him absolutely. His fidelity to both his parents was not
the least remarkable point in his strange character, and
although ardently attached to money, he could be generous
at the call of what he considered duty, and even lavish
when charity was concerned indeed, he frequently gave
concerts for the benefit of the poor, remembering the time
when he had been a poor man himself.
Paris, always eager for novelty, the self-elected critic of
the civilised world in all matters appertaining to art, was
by this time imperative in her demand to see
290 ' and hear PAGANINI: so, early in the spring
AT PARIS. .
of 1831, he set out for that fashionable capital.
Fame had preceded him with every kind of strange rumour
he could not only play on one string, it was said, but
his fiddle still gave forth strange music when all the strings
were removed. The old calumnies revived. The town
was placarded with villainous wood-cuts of him in prison
380 PAGANINI.
others represented him in caricature, playing on one string.
In short, expectation was wound up to its highest pitch,
when he suddenly arrived, in bad health, and immediately
gave a performance at the Opera-House, on March 9th,
1831. The calm and judicious veteran of the Royal Con-
servatory of Music in Belgium, M. FETIS, who knew him
well, and heard him often, and to whose work I am so
much indebted for the present sketch, can find no other
words to express the sensation which he created on his first
appearance at Paris than " universal frenzy." The whole
city flocked to hear him, the professors and virtuosi crowded
round him on the platform, as near as they dared approach,
in order to watch him play, after which they were no wiser
than before. At the end of each piece the whole audience,
it is said, rose en masse to recall him ; the tongue of envy
forgot to wag, and rivalry was put out of court. It \vas
hoped he might have thrown some light upon certain
prodigious violin studies which he had published, and
which had long been known at Paris. No one could play
them, or even conjecture how some of them were to be
played ; nor did PAGANINI reveal the secret, which lay, no
doubt, partly in a peculiar way of tuning the instrument,
as well as in a length and agility of finger which he alone
possessed.
About the middle of May he left Paris for London, and
the Times newspaper, which, at that time, hardly ever
PAGANINI IN LONDON. 381
noticed concerts, devoted half a column in a vain attempt
to give some idea of his first performance at
PAGANINI the King's Theatre. PAGANINI, to save himself
IN LONDON. , 11 T_ j J
trouble, had agreed, for an enormous sum
of money, to let himself to a speculator during his stay
in England, who made all arrangements for him and
took the proceeds. This plan has since been adopted by
several illustrious artists, M. JOACHIM amongst them ;
and, although it has been stigmatized as wanting in
dignity, it is probably, on the whole, the most satis-
factory to the artist, though not always to the public.
An attempt was made to double the prices at the Opera-
Ilouse, which raised great indignation : the prices ultimately
charged were the usual Opera charges no more and no
less and this was doubtless thought exorbitant for a con-
cert, although the solo performer was supported by an
orchestra and some of the best Opera singers, the famous
LABLACHE amongst them. The crowd at the doors on the
first night was excessive, and the pit was full to overflowing,
but the boxes were thin. PAGANINI was suffering at that
time from the inroads of his old complaint, aggravated by
the rapid encroachments of his last fatal malady, consump-
tion. He appeared contrary to the advice of his physicians,
and was received with the usual tumult of applause. From
a heap of contemporary criticism struggling vainly with the
difficulty of the subject, we extract a few passages from the
pen of an eye-witness, which strike us as unusually graphic.
382 PAG AN IN I.
MR. GARDNER, of Leicester, writes : " At the hazard of
my ribs, I placed myself at the Opera two hours and a half
before the concert began The concert
292.
TUB CRITICS opened with BEETHOVE.V'S second symphony,
admirably played by the Philharmonic band,
after which LABLACHE sang ' Largo al Factotum/ with
much applause, and was encored. A breathless silence,
and every eye was watching the action of this extra-
ordinary violinist ; and as he glided from the side scenes
to the front of the stage, an involuntary cheering burst
from every part of the house, many rising from their
scats to view the Spectre during the thunder of this un-
precedented cheering his gaunt and extraordinary appear-
ance being more like that of a devotee about to suffer
martyrdom than one to delight you with his art. With the
tip of his bow he sent off the orchestra in a grand military
movement with a force and vivacity as surprising as it was
new. At the termination of this introduction he com-
menced with a soft streaming note of celestial quality, and
with three or four whips of his bow elicited points of sound
that mounted to the third heaven and as bright as the stars.
.... He has long legs and arms, and his hands in his
playing often assume the attitude of prayer, with the fingers
pointed upwards. It was curious to watch the faces of
LINDLEY, DKAGONETTI, and the other great players, who took
up places on the platform to command a good view of him
during his performance they all seem to have agreed that
PAGANINI'S SPECIALITIES. 383
the like had never been heard before, and that in addition to
his marvellous eccentricities and novel effects, he had tran-
scended the highest level of legitimate art that had ever
been reached."
It has often been asked in what respects PAGANINI'S
playing differed from that of other great violinists
AJo*
in what has he enriched the art what has
SPECIALITIES, i j i , , r, mi
he discovered or invented ? These questions
have been to some extent answered by the painstaking
Professor of Music, GUHR, who had many opportunities of
watching him closely.
He was peculiar, first, in his manner of tuning. Some-
times the first three strings were tuned half a note higher,
the G string being a third lower. Sometimes he tuned his
G to B ; with a single turn of his peg he would change the
pitch of his G string, and never fail in his intonation. These
artifices explain, no doubt, many of his extraordinary
intervals.
Secondly, in his management of the bow he has had many
imitators, though none have approached him in the romantic
variety and " fiend-like power with which he ruled over the
strings/' His ordinary staccato, played with a very tight bow,
was prodigiously loud and firm, like the strokes of a hammer,
whilst his method of dashing the bow on the strings, and
letting it leap through an infinity of tiny staccato notes
with unerring precision was wholly his own invention.
384 FAGANINI.
Thirdly, his tremolo use of the left hand exceeded any-
thing which had been attempted up to that time. This
effect has been, like every other one of his inimitable
effects, driven to death by subsequent violinists.
Fourth, his use of harmonics now universally known to
violinists, was then absolutely new formerly only the open
harmonics had been used, and that very charily ; but PAGA-
NINI astonished the world by stopping the string with the
first finger, and extracting the harmonic simultaneously
with the fourth. By sliding up the first finger together
with the fourth, he played entire melodies in harmonics,
and got, on an average, about three octaves out of each
string; his use of double harmonics in rapid passages,
and such trifles as four simultaneous A flats, are stiil
problems which few, if any hands but his, have been able
to solve.
Lastly, his habit of plucking the strings, sometimes with
the right, sometimes with the left hand, and producing
those rapid pizzicato runs, on an accompaniment of a harp
or guitar, was absolutely new ; beyond these things it was
found impossible much farther to analyse his playing. His
secret, if he had any, died with him ; his music does not
reveal it. Although he wrote quartettes, solos, duetts, and
sonatas, fragments of about twenty-four of which are in
existence, only nine were found complete; of these the
Rondo known as " Clochette, 1 ' and often played by M.
SIVORI, and " Le Streghc," are perhaps the best known.
LOSSES. 385
The celebrated variations on the " Carnival de Venise w do
not appear to have been published as he played them,
though both ERNST and SIVORI claim to play the Paganini
Carnival. M. EETIS considers his finest compositions have
not been preserved amongst those he reckons a magnifi-
cent concerto played at Paris in 1813, and a grand military
sonata for the fourth string only.
The rest of PAGANINI'S story is soon told. Broken in
health, after an absence of six years, he returned to Italy,
where he was now nearly worshipped by his
' ' countrymen. He had grown immensely rich,
LOSSES.
and bought various properties in Tuscany. He
played at concerts from time to time, and was always most
generous in giving his talents for the benefit of the poor.
MR. DUBOURG, in his valuable work on the violin, asserts
that he went to America ; but of this I can find no trace
in the biography of M. FETIS, nor in any other docu-
ments which I have as yet come across. In 1835 PAGANINI
lived much between Milan and Genoa. The DUCHESS OF
PARMA had conferred the order of St. George on him in
1834.
In 1836 he got into bad hands. He lent his great
name to the establishment of a Casino in Paris, which
failed. He was obliged to go to Paris, and the journey,
no doubt, hastened his end. His consumption grew worse,
he could not bear the cold; he was annoyed by the un-
386 PAG AN INI.
scrupulous speculators, who tried to involve him in their
own ruin, and then refused to bear the burden with him.
They even succeeded in mulcting him in the sum of
50,000 francs, and he was actually detained by legal pro-
ceedings until he had paid the whole sum.
But his days of speculation and glory were alike num-
bered. In 1839 he was a dying man. He struggled with
indomitable energy against his deadly foe. He now often
took up the guitar, which, in the spring-time
ZPDL
THE NIGHT of his life, had been so intimately associated
with his first romantic attachment. He was a
great admirer of BEETHOVEN, and not long before his
death he played one of that master's quartettes, his
favourite one, with astonishing energy. In extreme weak-
ness, he laboured out to hear a requiem of CHERUBINI
for male voices, and soon afterwards, with all his last
energies, he insisted upon being conveyed to one of the
churches in Marseilles, where he took part in a solemn mass
of BEETHOVEN. His voice was now nearly extinct, and his
sleep, that greatest of consolations, was broken up by
dreadful fits of coughing, his features began to sink, and
he appeared to be little more than a living skeleton, so
excessive and fearful was his emaciation. Still he did not
believe in the approach of death. Day by day he grew
more restless, and talked of passing the winter at Nice, and
he did live on till the spring.
TEE END. 387
On the night of May 27, 1840, after a protracted
paroxysm, he suddenly became strangely tranquil. He
sank into a quiet sleep, and woke refreshed and
calm. The air was soft and warm. He desired
TOE END.
them to open the windows wide, draw the
curtains of his bed, and allow the moon, just rising in
the unclouded glory of an Italian sky, to flood his apart-
ment. He sat gazing intently upon it for some minutes,
and then again sank drowsily into a fitful sleep. Rousing
himself once more, his fine ear caught the sound of the
rustling leaves as they were gently stirred by some breath
of air outside. In his dying moments this sound of
the night wind in the trees seemed to affect him
strangely, and the summer nights on the banks of the
Arno long ago may have flashed back upon his mind, and
called up fading memories. But now the Arno was
exchanged for the wide Mediterranean Sea, all ablaze with
light. MOZART in his last moments pointed to the score of
the Requiem, which lay before him on his bed, and his lips
were moving, to indicate the effect of kettledrums in a
particular place, as he sank back in a swoon ; and it is
recorded of PAGANINI that on that fair moonlight night in
May, as the last dimness came over his eyes, he stretched
out his hand to grasp his faithful friend and companion, his
Guarnerius violin, and as he struck its chords once more,
and found that it ceased to speak with its old magic power,
he himself sank back and expired, like one broken-hearted
25 *
388 PAG AN INI.
to find that a little feeble, confused noise was all that
was now left of those strains that he had created and the
world had "worshipped.
He left 80,000 to his son, BARON ACHILLE PAGANINI,
and about 4<5 a year to ANTONIA BIANCHI, with whom he
had long since quarrelled. He had previously provided for
his mother. His violin he left to his native city, Genoa,
with directions that no other artist should ever play
upon it.
We have no heart to dwell upon the wretched stiife over
his dead body. PAGANINI, who had no great opinion of
the Catholic religion or the Catholic priests,
297.
OVER THE died without confession and the last sacraments.
He was, accordingly, refused burial in con-
secrated ground by the Bishop of Parma. For a long
time his corpse remained at a room in the hospital at
Nice. The body then lay for four years at Villa Franca,
when, owing, it was affirmed, to the ghostly violin sounds
that were heard about the coffin, his son, by paying large
sums of money, got permission to bury his father with
funeral rites in the village church near what had been
his favourite residence, the Villa Gajona. This last tribute
was tardily paid to the ashes of the immortal musician in
May of 1845.
Jfourfjr
THE MUSIC OF THE FUTUBE.
ifottttl)
THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE.
i.
INTERLUDE
ON THE TITLE OP BOOK IV.
T is not possible to write upon this subject the
title is out of date. The Wagnerian music of the
future has become the music of the present.
Such fragments of it as are intended to stand alone or
can be dissevered from their dramatic surroundings, are
the acknowledged plums in all our concert programmes.
Every provincial band aspires to produce them. The
operas which draw best at both of the great London houses
are WAGNER'S operas; and the London season of 1881,
392 INTERLUDE ON TEE TITLE OF BOOK IV.
\vith the Wagnerian cycle of dramas at one house and
Niebelunyen Ring at the other, succeeded in keeping almost
every other opera off the boards. The noisy opponents
of a few years ago remind me, with their almost inaudible
groans and faint praise of the victor, of the groans of
Fafner the dragon or " Wurm," and the unwilling tribute
which he is forced to pay just before he expires to the
prowess and might of Siegfried.
The evolution of art may be arrested, but, like that of
nature, it cannot be stopped. The process is as inexorable
as the fall of the leaf or the triumphant burst of spring.
Some of us die in the autumn and others perish in the
keener air of spring; but art leads forth her ringing choirs
into the golden summer land, and the strong and young
leap up at her call. Beautiful is the breaking out of fresh
thought, fair is the coming of the new age. There is a
wind in the trees, the murmur of waters ; a fragrance
streams from the East, and I seem to hear the morning
stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting
for joy.
WAGNER AND BEETHOVEN. 393
II.
WAGNER.
WAGNER is tlie most powerful personality that has appeared
in the world of music since BEETHOVEN. But indeed he
seems to me, in his wide range as poet, dramatist,
AvCL
WAGNER AND musician, and philosopher, almost alone in the
BEETHOVEN. , . ,. .
history or Art.
BEETHOVEN was a musician only. His glory is to have
carried the art of music to its extreme limits of develop-
ment : no one has yet gone beyond him.
WAGNER said, " I have invented nothing." You cannot
invent metre after the Greeks, or the modern drama after
SHAKSPERE, or colouring and perspective after the Italians
there is a point at which an art ceases to grow and stands
full-blown like a flower.
Most people admit that in music, as in other arts, that
point has been reached. What then remained ? This,
according to RICHARD WAGNER : to concentrate into one
aazziing focus ail the arts, and, having sounded and developed
the expressional depth, and determined the peculiar function
of each, to combine them at length into one perfect and
indivisible whole.
394 WAGNER.
Words seem childishly inadequate to render all at once
such a conception as this. Slowly we may master some of
its details and allow them to orb into a perfect
299.
UNITY OP whole. If you stand at the foot of one of the
Alps, you can seo but a little portion of it
a hamlet, a sloping patch of vineyard, and a pine copse
beyond ; but as you ascend the winding path the prospect
opens to right and left ; cascades leap by to lose, themselves
in the torrent below you plunge into the gloom of a
forest and emerge on to the higher meadows and pleasant
scenes of pastoral life yonder the soil grows rocky, and
tumbled boulders lie around you the cloud lifts, and a
vista of mountains and valleys is suddenly opened up, and
pressing forward you leave far below the murmurs of one
world, and raise your enraptured eyes to the black eagle,
as he wheels aloft in the golden air beyond the stainless
and eternal snows.
So when we are brought face to face with such a varied,
complex, and immense intelligence as that of RICHARD
"WAGNER we are apt to dwell on a part a peculiarity of the
music a turn of the drama a melody, a situation, an
eccentricity. But the secret lies, after all, in the unity of
effect. Close your eyes after a day in the Alps, and, as the
visions pass before you, all will grow clear to your inner
consciousness, and the varied scenes you have realized only
in succession will at last arrange themselves into one great
and majestic whole.
WAGNER THE BOY. 395
"Perhaps he has some talent for music/* said the sick
man as he heard little RICHARD, then only seven years old,
strumming a tune from Der Freyschutz on the
800.
WAGNER piano. It was Louis GEYER, his step-father;
painter, author, and actor, then on his death-bed,
thinking of the future, planning as dying men plan, and
hitting the mark as they often hit it, quite at random.
The child's vivid temperament and eager, sensitive mind
had always made him a favourite with the actor and the
poet, and he thought of making a painter of RICHARD, but
the boy seemed to have no turn for it. His mother, a
woman full of life and imagination, was less anxious and
more wise. She let him grow, and happily he was left to
her, " with no education/' as he says, " but life, art, and
myself.''
Indeed any attempt to hasten WAGNER'S development, or
to fix his career, would doubtless have failed. From the
first, the consciousness of his own force has been one of his
strangest and strongest peculiarities. At times it seems to
have almost intoxicated him at others it sustained and
cheered him in utter loneliness ; it has dominated all who
have come in personal contact with him, and bent the minds
and wills of the rebellious like reeds before the wind.
And the reason is evident. WAGNER was always prodigious
in his ability. Like those very fast trotters that flash along
the highways of England and America, he has been in the
habit of passing everyone on the road, and passing them
396 WAGNER.
easily. But the consciousness of power bred in him a
singular wilfulness. At school he could learn anything,
but he would learn only as he chose and what he chose.
When his time came he mastered, with incredible rapidity
and accuracy, Greek, Latin, mythology, and ancient history.
As for his music-master, he soon sent him to the right-
about, telling him he would learn music his ovm way.
Indeed the variety of influences, and the rapidity with which
he absorbed them, one after the other, quite unfitted him
for going into harness early in any one direction.
At the age of seventeen he had dipped into most litera-
tures, ancient and modern glanced at science, learnt
English in order to read SHAKSPERE, weighed
several schools of philosophy, studied and dis-
EXPRESSION.
missed the contending theologies, absorbed
SCHILLER and worshipped GOETHE (then eighty-four years
old), turned away from the conventional stage of KOTZEBUE
and IFFLAND, tasted politics, .and been deeply stirred by the
music of BEETHOVEN.
There was doubtless a great indistinctness about his aims
at this time. To live, to grow, to feel, to be filled with new
emotions, and to sound his enormous capacities for receiv-
ing impressions and acquiring facts this had hitherto been
enough ; but the vexed question was inevitable : to what
end?
The artistic temperament could give but one answer to
EXPRESSION. 397
that "EXPRESSION I" Creation itself man the world,
the universe is nothing but that. There is ever this im-
perious divine necessity for outward expression. This is
the lesson of the ages and of the universe of which we
see but a little speck realized upon our tiny and overcrowded
planet. But this burning thought turns the mind of man
itself into a divine microcosm he, too, begins to obey in his
higher activities what he perceives to be the supreme law of
the divine life. He, too, must flash into self-consciousness,
and breathe in form, until all that slept in the silence of
his heart comes forth swift and radiant with the wind and
fire of emotion, and stands at last like an angel, full of
wreathed melodies and crowned with stars.
Such to the artist soul is the beloved parable of earth.
The life within must become outward; all that we are is
dying to be born : is craving to realize itself, to know, to
possess, to adore !
It is quite obvious .that life is here seized, not from the
intellectual, but from the emotional side. The intellect is
used to fathom, to formulate, to economize, and represent, in
their most impressive forms, the feelings which would
otherwise be wasted and mis-spent ; but the intellect, which
has played so important a part in WAGNER'S system, is
always the second, never the first factor, and its function
has been to analyze the various expressional media of the
past and present, and to create some form or combination,
more exhaustive and powerful than all the rest.
893 WAGNER.
WAGNER was willing to be led; but be could not heh>
feeling that an artist now is the heir of all the ages, that
now for the first time he can stand and gauge
THE ARTS the creations of the past in poetry, painting,
drama, and music, and ask himself, how far,
through these, has the inner world of the mind found
utterance. WAGNER had the unconscious but inflexible
hardihood to take up each art in turn, weigh it, and
find it wanting. Each fell short of the whole reality in
some respect. Painting leaves out motion and solidarity,
sculpture possesses solidarity without motion, and usually
without colour. Poetry without drama appeals to the
senses chiefly through the imagination; in itself it has
neither sound, colour, nor solidarity. The spoken drama
lacks the intensity which it is the unique function of musi-
cal sound to give ; whilst mere pantomime, whether of dance
or drama, lacks the indefinite power of sound as well as the
definite suggestion of words; and, lastly, musical sound
alone provokes the eternal <f why ? " which can only be
answered by associating the emotion raised with thought,
for music alone is without solidarity, colour, or thought,
whilst possessing motion and sound in the highest perfec-
tion.
It will be said, "Yes, but each art is complete in itself."
True, but not complete as a means of expressing thought
and feeling. You urge, " But the power of art lies often in
its suggestiveness. I read a poem and shut my eyes, and
INDIVIDUALISM OF SHAKSPERE. 399
the vision is more splendid than anything that could be
presented outwardly." Yes, indirectly, because you have
imagination; the vision was beautiful, but its quality
depended on you, not on the art. Art is for expres-
sion, and that art is best which expresses most. Do not
confuse the effects of imagination and association with
the effects of art. A barrel-organ or a daub may serve
to set a-going imagination and memory, but art has to
do with expression, and is defective qua art just where
it begins to make these demands upon imagination and
memory.
Those who have traced WAGNER'S career from boyhood
know how patiently he has questioned every art, how pas-
303. sionately he has surrendered himself to it, for a
INDIVIDUAL- tj me . how w illinsr he would have been to rest,
ISM OF
SUAKSPEKE h ow inexorably experience and feeling have urged
him on until, like the hardy navigators of old, he broke at
last into a new and undiscovered ocean. At the age of
eleven he had read SHAKSPERE. Surely dramatic expres-
sion of thought and feeling could go no farther. But he
would test it as a form of art by experiment, and see how
it worked. He immediately constructed a drama, horrible
and thorough a cross between Hamlet and King Lear.
Forty-two characters suffered death in the first four acts,
so that in the fifth, in order to people his stage at all,
most of them had to reappear as ghosts. The Shakspercan
400 WAGNER.
method was closely adhered to, and for several years he
continued to brood over it lovingly.
Here was a form intensely individual, self-conscious in
which man explored the depths of his own nature. On that
rough wooden stage of the Globe Theatre so vivid were
the characters, so rapid and complex the feelings, so perfect
and expressive the pantomime, that the want of stage-
trappings and accessories was hardly felt. Still, it was a
restrained expression; it was too mosaic; the individuals
lacked an universal element in which to live and move and
have their being : we sit fascinated and bewildered with the
subtle analysis and changing episodes ; but the characters
do not run up into universal types, they are too entirely
absorbed by their own thoughts and feelings. The contest
here is not with Fate and Time, as on the Greek stage, but
with Self and Society.
Excited but oppressed by the complex inner life of the
Shaksperean drama, WAGNER still felt the need of wedding
the personal life to some larger ideal types, and
Ov4:
THE GEEEK intensifying the emotional element by the intro-
duction of musical sound. Then the cramped
wooden stage of the Globe Theatre vanished, and in its
place rose the marble amphitheatre, open to the sky,
embedded in the southern slope of the Athenian Acropolis.
In the classical drama nothing was individual the whole
life of Greece was there, but all was summed up in large
THE GREEK THEATRE. 401
and simple types. The actors speak through fixed masks.
All fine inflexion is lost all change of facial expression
sacrificed to massive groupings and stately poses, regulated
by the shrill pipe and the meagre harp. But still there is in
the dramas of .^ESCHYLUS, EURIPIDES, and SOPHOCLES a breadth
of expression which enables the soul to shake itself free from
its accidental surroundings and enter into general sympathy
with the wider life of humanity. It is this escape into the
ideal which the modern self-conscious spirit most needs :
this merging of discordant self in the universal harmony
which drew WAGNER towards the theatre of the Greeks.
There we start from the gods, the ideal representatives of
human thought and emotion. Zeus is in Agamemnon, Ares
in Achilles, Artemis in Iphigenia, Aphrodite in Phaedra ;
and there is something prophetic and sublime in the sponta-
neous growth of these types beneath the human touch, until
they transcend the gods and conquer Olympus itself. Cas-
sandra is greater than the gods in her consciousness of
injustice Prometheus is sublime in his god-like defiance
of fate Antigone triumphs through voluntary sacrifice
it is the inexorable progress of the human conscience towards
a higher Olympus, a purer deity men come from gods, but
excel the gods ; then follows the inevitable decline, " the
dusk of the gods," and, lastly, the assertion of man's divinity
and the rehabilitation through man of the divine idea.
This thought Christianity should eternally present; but
26
402 WAGNER.
as its votaries unhappily trampled upon one half of human
305. life, and caricatured the other all through the
THE SOUL OF Mijjje Ages, the Renaissance insisted upon
THE GKBEK
DRAMA. reviving the types of Greek beauty and force,
in order to restore the balance and reassert the place and
dignity of the down-trodden senses. That protest, in the
teeth of our modern religious narrowness, will continue
to be popular until the reconciliation between the old and
the new world-spirit is reached in a higher, freer life,
recognizing and making room for the development in due
balance of every part of human nature. The Greek view
of life may not be adequate, but it had elements which
M-e want; and to study art we must still go to Athens.
"Within his limits the Greek remains our supreme standard.
For what the Greek was, and for what he saw, his theatre
found an almost perfect art-form. The dance or science of
pantomimic motion was part of his daily education. His body
was trained in the Palaestra, or gymnasium, and his life was
one of constant drill to enable him to take part in the games
and national festivals. The elastic tongue of HOMER had
been enriched and fired by a hundred poets before the full
development of the Greek drama, and hymns and songs, set
to rhythmic and choral melodies of every character and
variety, supplied him with ready emotional utterance upon
all occasions. Add to this the profound enthusiasm which
still accompanied the ancient rites, the Delphic oracles and
the Eleusinian. mysteries, and we have all the material *
GREEK CHORUS. 403
which were woven into one harmonious whole by ^SCHYLUS
poet, warrior, stage manager, and religious devotee.
The soul of the Greek drama, freed from accidental asso-
ciations, must now be melted down in the new crucible.
WAGNER found there an intense earnestness of
306.
GREEK purpose the devout portrayal of a few funda-
mental types the large clear outline like the
frieze of the Parthenon a simple plot and well-developed
phases of feeling as pronounced and trenchant as the
rhythmic motions of the dramatis persona ; and lastly he
found what he found not in SIIAKSPERE the Greek
chorus. This gave its binding intensity to the whole
drama this provided the universal element in which the
actors lived and moved and had their being. The chorus
ever in motion a band of youths or maidens, priests or
supernatural beings, fluid and expressive, like the emotions
of the vast and earnest assembly ; the chorus bore aloft
a wail over the agonies of Philoctetes a plaint for Iphigenia
a questioning of the gods for Cassandra; it enveloped the
stage with floods of passionate declamation ; it rushed, it
pointed, it swayed, it sighed and whispered in broken pathe-
tic accents ; it was like the sobbing of the sea on a rocky
strand the sound of the waves in Ionian caves the wild
sweep of the tempest answering back man's passionate plaint,
and fitting the simple feelings of the great types on the
stage with an almost elemental intensity of expression. The
26 *
4.04 WAGNER.
mysterious variety of Greek metres, the varied spasmodic
rhythms, can only be understood when the vision of the
Greek chorus rises before us in its eager bursts of appropriate
but fitful activity. That changing chant, that harsh ringing
progression of notes on the Greek scales of which Grego-
riaus are still the Christian relics we should not call it
music, it was not melody, much less harmony, but it was
sound inflexions marvellously used to drill declamation,
posture, and pantomime. The soul of it has transmigrated
in these latter days it has become the Wagnerian
orchestra.
Turn back now, for a moment, to the Shaksperean
drama. Chorus, musical sound, band, song, all the voices
of universal nature environing man appalling,
THE INDI- consoling, inspiring him have vanished. A new
VIDUAL IN .
THE inner-world, unknown to the Greeks, has taken
their place, and man is absorbed with himself.
Yet without that universal voice which he can make his
own, how he shrinks, dwarfed by his narrow individuality ;
no longer a part of the great whole and soul of things;
nature no longer his mother, the winds no more his
friends, the sea no more his comforter ! The ideal atmo-
sphere of the Greek chorus is missed ; the power of
music, however rudimentary, is absent; SHAKSPERE seems
to have felt it; it passes over his sublime creations
as an invocation to Music in Twelfth Night, or in Ophelia's
UNION OF THE ARTS. 405
plaintive song. And this is the point of contact between
the old drama of ^ESCHYLUS and the new drama of SHAK-
SPERE ; the two stand for ever for the opposite poles of
dramatic art the universal type, the individual life and
both are necessary. The individual is naturally evolved
from the universal, but once evolved and developed it must
be restored to the universal and be glorified by it.
At this crisis, in his quest after a perfect art-form,
WAGNER found himself confronted with BEETHOVEN'S
music. He did not believe that drama could
308.
UNION OF be carried farther than ^ESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES,
and SHAKSPERE, or music any farther than
BEETHOVEN; but he did conceive the project of leading the
whole stream of the Beethovenian music into the channels
of Shaksperean drama. The Greek chorus might have been
inadequate to the simple types of Greek tragedy, but modern
life, with its self-conscious spirituality, its questions, its
doubts, its hopes, and its immense aspirations this seemed
to require quite a new element of expression. The voice of
this inner life had been preparing for four hundred years ;
when it was ready it turned out to be no inflexible mask,
through which a human voice might speak, nor even a
mobile chorus, but a splendid and complex organ of expres-
sion, fitted so closely about the soul of man, as to become
the very ^olian harp upon which the breath of his life could
freely play.
406 WAGNER.
In the great world- laboratory of Art, Waguer found
already all that he required. There was, as he remarked,
nothing left for him to invent ; the arts of poetry, music,
painting, and pantomime had been explored separately and
perfected; nay, one step more had been made the arts
had actually been combined at different times in different
ways. Music with pantomime and poem by the Greeks ;
music with pantomime, drama, painting, and every conceiv-
able effect of stage scenery and costume, as in modern opera;
music and words, as in oratorio or the cantata. But in Greece
music was wholly undeveloped as an art; acting had never
sounded the depths of individual life and expression. The
Shaksperean drama left out music. The cantata and
oratorio omitted pantomime and painting ; whilst modern
opera presented a meretricious and maimed combination of
the arts resulting from a radically defective form.
With a surprising vigour of intellect, WAGNER has analysed
the situation, and explained exactly why he felt dissatisfied
with the best operatic efforts of the past, and why he seeks
to supersede opera with the " musical drama/'
I think his critical results may be briefly summed up
thus : In the musical drama, poetry, music, scenery, and
309. acting are to be so blended as that each shall
VTAGNEK'S j iave j tg own appropriate share, and no more.
THEORY
SUMMED UP. as a medium of expression. The acting must
not be cramped by the music, as in common opera, where
ITALIAN OPERA ANALYSED. 407
a man has to stand on one toe till he has done his roulade,
or pauses in the dead of night to shout out a song about
" Hush ! we shall be discovered ! " when there is not a
moment to spare. The music must not be spoiled for
the acting, as in ballet and pantomime, where acting is
overstrained to express what the sister arts of poetry
and music are better fitted to convey. And poetry, which
after all supplies the definite basis and answers the
inevitable " why ? " must not be sacrificed, as in our opera
libretti, to the demands of singers for aria and sccna, whilst
the scenery must only attempt effects and situations which
can be made to look real. The object of the grand musical
drama is, in fact, to present a true picture of human feeling
with the utmost fulness and intensity, freed from every
conventional expression by the happy union of all the arts,
giving to each only what it is able to deal with but thus
dealing with everything, leaving nothing to the imagina-
tion. The WAGNERIAN drama completely exhausts the
situation.
Filled with this magnificent conception, WAGNER looked
out upon the world of modern opera and what did he
310. see? First, he noticed that the opera had made
ITALIAN false start. It sprang, not from the earnest
OPERA
ANALYSED. f ce ling of the miracle plays, but from the
indolent desire of the luxurious Italian nobles to listen
to the delicious popular melodies in a refined form. The
408 WAGNER.
spontaneous street action (which may to this day be
admired in Naples or Florence) was exchanged for a sort
of drawing-room stage and poets were hired to re-set
the Italian melodies, as MOORE re-set the Irish melodies,
for ears polite. This new aristocratic mongrel art had
nothing to do with the real drama. METASTASIO himself
was only an Italian Mil. CHORLEY the very humble servant
of everybody's tunes; but these tunes had to be strung
together, so the recitative, used for centuries in church, was
borrowed ; then the product was naturally a little dull, so
the whole had to be whipped up with a dance ; hence the
ballet, and there you have the three fixed points of the
opera aria, recitative, and ballet which to this day deter-
mine the form of modern opera. Thus opera, whilst it had
no connection with the real drama, did not even spring from
the best musical elements. " From the prosperity of opera
in Italy," says WAGNER, " the art-student will date the
decline of music in that country No one who has
any conception of the grandeur and ineffable depth of the
earlier Italian church music PALESTRINA'S ' Stabat Mater/
for instance will ever dream of maintaining that Italian
opera can be looked upon as the legitimate daughter of that
wondrous mother."*
As ear-tickling, and not truth of expression, was the
chief thing, and as there was nothing much to be expressed,
Music of the Future : Letter to F Yillot, p. 10.
GLUCK AND THE INCORRIGIBLE OPERA. 409
the arias got wider and wider of the words, arid at last the
words became mere pegs, and the music totally irrelevant
as who should dance a jig over a grave.
GLUCK'S reform consisted in making the operatic tunes
once more true to the words ; but the improvement touched
811. the sentiment only, without reaching the defective
THE U INCORRI ^ orm ' ^ a France the form was slightly redeemed
GIBLE OPERA, by the superior libretti and more elaborate
pantomime ; whilst in Germany opera arrived as a finished
foreign production, and MOZART and others had to go to
Italy to learn it. "In expressing my highest admiration of
the exquisite beauty of our great masters," says WAGNER,
"I did not detract from their fame in showing that the cause
of their weaknesses lay in the faultiness of the genre."*
And the defect of genre lay chiefly in the immolation of
the libretto to the exigences of fixed aria, scena, and recita-
tive. The drama, which has to be stretched upon that
Procrustean bed, must necessarily become disjointed and
lifeless in the process. ROSSINI retarded the progress of
the musical drama for at least fifty years through the abso-
lute triumph of melody, in the most fascinating abundance,
over the resources of the orchestra and the inspirations of
the poet.
" His opera," writes EDWARD DANNREUTHER, to whose
* Ibid., P . 22.
410 WAG NEE.
pamphlet on WAGNER I am so much indebted, " is like a
string of beads, each bead being a glittering and intoxi-
cating tune. Dramatic and poetic truth all that makes a
stage performance interesting is sacrificed to tunes. Poet
and musician alike had felt this. GOETHE and SCHILLER
both found the operatic form, and even the existing stage,
so uncongenial, that they took to writing narrative and
descriptive plays not to be acted at all, and have been
followed in this by BYRON, TENNYSON, BROWNING, and
SWINBURNE. BEETHOVEN wrote but one opera, Fidelia, in
which the breadth of the overture, or overtures, seems to
accuse the narrowness of the dramatic form, although the
libretto of Fidelio is very good, as times go. MENDELSSOHN
and SCHUMANN could never find a suitable libretto.
The conclusion of all this is obvious. The perfect medium
which was to combine the apparently unmanageable arts
was yet to come, and WAGNER proposed to him-
312.
THE MCSICAL self the task of harnessing these fiery steeds to
his triumphal car, and driving them all together.
He must choose his own subject, with a simple plot and a
few strong passions and great situations. He must write
his own drama, which, without being either orthodox verse
or fixed metre, would aim in its mobile and alliterative
pathos at following the varied inflexions of natural feeling.
He must arrange his own scenery, perfect in detail, and
within the limits of stage possibility ; and finally he must
WAGNERS MASTERS. 411
compose his own music and drill his band, chorus, and
characters.
To his prophetic vision the old opera form of aria, scena,
and recitative has disappeared. The orchestra in a wondrous
fashion floods the soul with an emotion appropriate to the
situation. The drama itself advances unshackled by any
musical exigency; the music flows on continuously, not
imposing a form, but taking its form from the emotion of
the sentences as they follow each other. Snatches there
are here and there of exquisite melody, broken up by part-
singing, with a wild burst of chorus when needful to fulfil
the dramatic occasion ; but never must action be delayed,
never must emotion be belied, never truth sacrificed : only
at times, when the expressional power of words ceases, the
music will fulfil, deepen, combine, and sometimes lift the
drama almost out of itself. Then the spectator is raised
into a sphere of ecstatic contemplation; the pageantry
passes before his eyes as in a dream, whilst his soul lives
and moves only in the ideal sphere of the varied and
intense passions which are being played out before him.
"Whilst these perceptions and aims were slowly maturing
in him, WAGNER found himself constantly at war with his
age and his surroundings. At sixteen, he had
WAGNER'S resolved to devote himself to music, finding in
!R8 " it the ineffable expression for emotions otherwise
mainly inexpressible. Musical notes and intervals were to
412 WAGNER.
him radiant forms and flaming ministers. MOZART tauglit
him that exquisite certainty of touch which selects exactly
the right notes to express a given musical idea. WEBER
taught him the secret of pure melody, how to stamp with
an indelible type a given character, as in the return of
the Samiel motive in Der Freyschutz ; he also perceived
in that opera the superiority of legend and popular myth,
as on the Greek stage, to present the universal and eternal
aspects of human life in their most pronounced and
ideal forms. BEETHOVEN supplied him with the mighty
orchestra, capable of holding in suspension an immense
crowd of emotions, and of manipulating the interior and
complex feelings with the instantaneous and infallible
power of a magician's Avand. SCHUBERT taught him the
freedom of song CHOPIK the magic elasticity of chords
SPOHR the subtle properties of the chromatic scale and
even MEYERBEER revealed to him the possibility of stage
effect through the Grand Opera. SHAKSPERE, GOETHE,
and SCHILLER suggested the kind of language in which
such dramas as Lohengrin and Rheingold might be written ;
whilst MADAME SCHRODER DEVRIENT revealed to him what
a woman might accomplish in the stage presentation of
ideal passion with such a part as Elsa in Lohengrin, or
Brunnhilde in Walkiire.
But the immediate result of this, as I have said, was not
promising. Contrary to the advice of his friends, he had
thrown himself, heart and soul, into the studv of music as a
WAGNER AT TWENTY. 413
profession. Under the Cantor Weinlig, at Leipsic, and
whilst at the University, he produced an overture and
symphony, which were played, and not unfavourably re-
ceived, at the Gewandhaus ; but his early work, with
here and there an exceptional trait in harmony, was
nothing but a pale copy of MOZART, as may be seen
from a poor little piano sonata lately republished by
BREITKOPF.
His health now broke down. He was twenty years
old (1833), and. he went to his brother, a professor of
music at Wurzburg, where he stayed a year, at
WAGNER AT the end of which time he was appointed musical
director at the Magdeburg theatre, where, under
the combined influence of WEBER and BEETHOVEN, he pro-
duced two operas The Fairies, and The Novice of Palermo
neither of which succeeded. He left his place in disgust,
and obtained another post at the Konigsberg theatre. There
he married an actress a good creature, who, without being
much to blame, does not seem to have materially increased
his happiness, but who decidedly shared the opinion of his
friends that the composition of " pot-boilers " was superior
to the pursuit of the Ideal. The Ideal, however, haunted
WAGNER, and Poverty.
In 1836 he left with MINA for Riga on the shores of the
Baltic, and there, as chef d' or chest re at the theatre, he
4H WAGNER.
really appears to have enjoyed studying the operas of
MEHUL, SPONTINI, AUBER; for, whilst suffering
what he describes as a dull, gnawing paiu at
RIEXZL
the frequent irrelevance of the sentiment to the
music, the nobler correspondences and beautiful inspirations
gave him far-off glimpses of that musical drama to which he
even now dimly aspired.
In the midst of his routine duties BULWER'S novel,
Rienzi, struck his imagination. There, as on a large and
classic stage, was portrayed that eternal revolt of the
human spirit against tyranny, routine, selfishness, and
corruption, of which the Polish insurrection of 1831 and
the Revolution of July were the modern echoes. Rienzi, a
tribune of the people, dreaming of the old austere Republic,
in the midst of corrupt Papal Rome a noble heart, a
powerful will at war \uth a brutal and vulgar age, sup-
ported, cheered by the enthusiasm of a devoted and patriotic
sister raised by a wave of popularity to the highest summit
of human power, then hurled down by the Papal anathema,
betrayed by a mean and cowering aristocracy, banished by
the mob that had so lately hailed him as a deliverer, and
at last falling by a treacherous hand upon the charred and
crumbling ashes of his own homestead, the last great
tribune of Rome ! here was a subject with immense out-
lines, full of situations in which the greatest breadth might
be joined to the most detailed inflexions of feeling. In it
WAGNER, whilst not departing avowedly from the form of
WAG NEK A MOB ORATOR. 415
the grand opera then in vogue at Paris, has in fact burst the
boundaries. Rienzi is already the work of an independent
master it is, at least, prophetic of Lohengrin and Tristan,
whilst comparing favourably in pure melody and sensa-
tional effects with any of the current operas. What rush,
triumph, aspiration about the large outlines and tramping
measures of the overture what elan and rugged dignity in
the choruses what elevation in Rienzi's prayer, " God of
Light!" what fervour and inexhaustible faith in the
phrase, " Thou hast placed me as a pilot on a treacherous
and rocky strand " what imagery, as of vast buildings and
ranged towers dimly seen athwart the dull red dawn, in the
music of " Scatter the night that reigns above this city/'
and what chastened exaltation, free from all Italian flourish
or ornament, of " Rise, thou blessed sun, and bring with
thee resplendent liberty ! "
But in 1839, which saw the text and the completion of
the two first acts, we are far indeed from the production of
Rienzi ; it struck, however, the key-note of a most impor-
tant and little-understood phase in WAGNER'S career the
political phase.
Musicians, poets, and artists are not, as a rule, politicians.
Their world is the inner world the world of
316.
WAGNER emotion and thought, which belongs to no
R ' special age or clime, but is eternal and uni-
versal. GOETHE and BEETHOVEN cared little for revolutions,
4 1C WAGNER.
and have even been deemed wanting in patriotism. But
WAGNER was a hot politician. He was at one time a
mob orator, and was seduced by his illustrious friend
ROCKEL, who was afterwards put in prison, to throw him-
self at Dresden into the rise of Saxony and the agita-
tions of 1848. He was proscribed and banished from
German soil, and years afterwards when he had, if not
recanted, at all events acquiesced in things as they were, he
was obliged to fly from Munich, warned by the friendly
king that his life was in danger. The title of but one of his
numerous semi-political pamphlets, Art and the Revolution,
gives us the real clue to all this. People have accused
WAGNER of time-serving and change in politics, but the
fact was that he favoured social revolution because he
thought it needful to art revolution. Conventionality and
stagnation in art seemed to him the natural outcome of
conventionality and stagnation in society ; the world must
be recalled to feeling and reality before art could again
become the ideal life of the people, as it was once in
Greece. But when, through royal patronage later on, all
impediment to the free development of his art-work disap-
peared, his revolutionary tendencies also disappeared. He,
too, was, first and foremost, Artist, and he came to realise
his vocation, which had to do with Art, and with " the
Revolution '' only in so far as it affected " Art."
But, in fact, no ardent soul could escape the romantic
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 417
and revolutionary contagion that swept over France, Ger-
317. many, and even England, between 1830 and 1
ROMANTIC 185 Europe seemed to breathe freely once
MOVEMENT.
been lifted from her oppressed bosom but then, like a
wayward child, she burst into all kinds of excesses.
The atheism of the first revolution, the brutality of
NAPOLEON BUONAPARTF/S administration, the dulness of
Louis PHILIPPE'S, the revived taste for Greek art combined
with the inflexible dogmatism of the Papal creed all these
conspired to fill the ardent youth of the period with a deep
revolt against things as they were. With this came a
settled longing for a return of some sort to nature and
freedom, and a vague but intense aspiration towards the
ideal and immaterial world, which in other times might
have taken the form of a religious revolution, b.ut in 1830
broke out in what has been called " Romanticism " in Art.
It was seen in the writings of MAZZINI and the mutterings
of Italian freedom ; in the insatiable and varied develop-
ments of MADAME SAND'S genius, in the wild and pathetic
cries of ALFRED DE MUSSET, in the sentimeutalism of
LAMARTINE, in the vast scorn and bitter invective of HUGO,
in the heart-broken submission of LACORDAIRE, and in the
despair of DE LAMMENAIS. BYRON, SHELLEY, and TENNY-
SON caught both the most earthly and the most heavenly
echoes of the romantic movement in England ; whilst its
inner life and genius have found, after all, their most subtle
27
418 WAGNER.
expression in the music of BEETHOVEN, MENDELSSOHN,
SCHUMANN, BERLIOZ, CHOPIN, WAGNER, LISZT, and RUBIN-
STEIN.
' It seems, indeed," writes WAGNER, in one of those veins of flashing
perception in which he so abounds, "that human sentiment, as if
intensified by the pressure of conventional civilization, had sought an
outlet for asserting itself according to its own laws of expression. The
astounding popularity of music in our time proves the correctness of the
supposition that the modern development of this art has met an innate
desire of the human spirit."*
WAGNER had left Magdeburg for Riga, but he soon came
to the end of his tether there. A stupid little provincial
town was not likely to become then what
318.
WAGNER'S WAGNER has made Bayreuth since the stage
for turning upside down the art-theories of the
civilized world. Pushed by what he calls " despair," with-
out money and without friends, but with that settled
faith in himself which has made him independent of both
until it has won both, the obscure chef d'orchestre resolved
to go to Paris and storm the Grand Opera, then at
the feet of ROSSINI and that strange, unscrupulous bric-a-
brac composer, MEYERBEER ! The small vessel in which he
sailed was blown about the Baltic for three weeks, put into
many desolate coast-nooks, and nearly wrecked. After
many hardships, shared with the rough and often starving
Letter to Villot, p. 30.
WAGNER AND M'EYERBEER. 4lD
crew, the lonely musician arrived in London (1840), with
his head full of Paris and the Grand Opera, and with Rienzi
in his carpet bag.
Whilst here he playfully seized the musical motive of the
English people. It lay, he said, in the five consecutive
ascending notes (after the first three) of " Rule Britannia" :
there was expressed the whole breadth and downright bluff
(< go " of the British nation. He threw " Rule Britannia "
into an overture, and sent it by post to SIR GEORGE SMART,
then omnipotent musical professor in London; but the
postage being insufficient, the MS. was not taken in, and at
this moment is probably lying in some dim archive of the
Post Office, " left till called for."
Crossing to Dieppe, he met the crafty and clever MEYER-
BEER, who instantly saw the man he had to deal with, and
probably conceived in a moment that policy of
oil).
WAGNER AND apparent support but probable intrigue which
R made him throughout life WAGNER'S pet aver-
sion.
It has been unwarrantably asserted that WAGNER hated
the Jews because of MEYERBEER and MENDELSSOHN, and hated
MEYERBEER and MENDELSSOHN because they were success-
ful; but WAGNER'S dearest friends have been Jews; he only
objected to what he considered the low level of their art
theories; and if he hated MEYERBEER and MENDELSSOHN
two men also at loggerheads, by the way it was not simply
27 *
420 WAGNER.
because they had the ear of Europe, but because they and
their friends kept everyone else out of the field, whilst
MEYERBEER debased musical art to the level of the vulgarest
sensation, and MENDELSSOHN never rose in WAGNER'S
opinion above the plane of a drawing-room prophet, whilst
creating an elegant and pseudo-classic standard of excellence
to which everyone soon learned to bow down.
In this opinion I shall never concur. MENDELSSOHN has
been to me as much a revelator of the beautiful as WAGNER
has been of the sublime. Nothing is more painful to me than
the bitter opposition between the friends of MENDELSSOHN
and WAGNER. These two great spirits were probably as
antipathetic as MOORE and WORDSWOTH ; but although
WAGNER is the inexorable and colossal development in art
since BEETHOVEN, MENDELSSOHN reigns for ever in a sweet
wayside temple of his own, full of bright dreams and visions,
incense and ringing songs. And partly is he so sweet
because, unburthened with any sense of a message to utter,
a mission to develop, he sings like a child in the valleys of
asphodel, weaving bright chaplets of spring flowers for the
whole world, looking upon the mystery of grief and pain
with wide eyes of sympathy, and at last succumbing to it
himself, but not understanding it, with a song of tender
surprise upon his lips.
WAGNER passed two terrible years, 1840-4.2, in Paris.
MEYERBEER had given him introductions, and introduced
WAGNER IN PARIS. 421
him later to M. JOLY, a stage-director at Paris, whom he
must have known to be on the point of bank-
320.
WAGNER IN ruptcy, and who suspended the rehearsal of the
Novice of Palermo at the last moment. But this
was but the end of a series of checks. He wrote an overture
to Faust. His good friend and faithful ally, SCHLESINGER,
editor of the Gazette Musicale, got it rehearsed at the
Conservatoire. It sounded quite too strange and bizarre to
those ears polite, and was instantly snuffed out.
He submitted a libretto, "Love Forbidden," to a theatrical
manager, but it had not a chance, and dropped. SCHLE-
SINGER now employed him to write, and he wrote articles
and novels, and so kept body and soul together. No one
would listen to his music, but he was not a bad hack, and
was hired for a few francs to arrange Halevy's " Queen of
Cyprus "for the piano, and the latest tunes of DONIZETTI
and BELLINI for piano and cornet a piston.
At night he stole into the Grand Opera, and there, as he
tells us, felt quite certain that his own works would one day
supersede the popular efforts of ROSSINI and MEYEKBEEU.
He does not seem to have been dejected like a lesser soul;
in what the French called his immense orgueil, he was sorry
for their want of appreciation, but never dreamed of altering
his ideas to suit them. " Je me flattais," says the unpaid
musical hack, "d'imposer les miennes." Meanwhile the
splendid band of the Conservatoire, under HABENECK, con-
soled him, and on the Boulevards he often met and chatted
422 WAGNER.
with AUBER, for whom he had a sincere respect and admira-
tion. AUBER was at least a conscientious musician of genius,
who knew his business, and did not debase what was at no
time a very exalted but still a legitimate branch of his art,
the opera comique; and, besides, AUBER was a bon comarade,
and liked WAGNER, probably without understanding him.
After months of drudgery, and chiefly penny-a-liniug
for the Gazette Musicale, WAGNER felt the imperious
321. necessity for a return to his own art. He took a
THE FLYING \{^\\Q cottage outside Paris, hired a piano, and
DUTCHMAN,
1841. shut himself up. He had done for a time, at
least, with the mean, frivolous, coarse world of Paris he
did not miss his friends, he did not mind his poverty. He
was again on the wild Norwegian coast, beaten about with
storms, and listening to the weird tales of mariners, as in
broken and abrupt utterances, or with bated breath, they
confided to him the legend common in one form or other
to sea-faring folk in all parts of the world the legend of
the Flying Dutchman. The tale sprang from the lives and
c.d ventures of those daring navigators of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and reflects the desperate struggle with
the elements, the insatiable thirst for the discovery of new
lands athwart unknown seas; and it seems to embody for
ever the avenging vision of men who, resolved to win, had
so often dared and lost all. A famous captain, mad to
double the Cape of Storms, beaten back again and again,
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, 18-11. 423
at length swears a mighty oath to persevere throughout
eternity. The devil takes him at his word. The captain
doubles the Cape, but is doomed to roam the seas for ever
from pole to pole as the Wandering Jew to tread the earth
his phantom vessel the terror of all mariners, and the
dreadful herald of shipwreck. Here was a legend which
needed but one inspired touch of love to make it a grand
epitome of sea-faring life, with its hard toils, its forlorn
hopes, and its tender and ineffably sweet respites. The
accursed doom of the Flying Dutchman can be lifted by
human love alone. The captain, driven by an irrepressible
longing for rest, may land once in seven years, and if he
can find a woman who will promise to be his and remain
faithful to him for one term of seven years, his trial will be
over he will be saved.
The legend thus humanized becomes the vehicle for the
expression of those intense yet simple feelings and situations
which popular myth, according to WAGNER, has the property
of condensing into universal types. Immense unhappiness,
drawn by magnetic attraction to immense love, tried by
heartrending doubt and uncertainty, and crowned with
fidelity and triumphant love, the whole embodied in a clear,
simple story, summed up in a few situations of terrible
strength and inexorable truth, such is WAGNER'S conception
of the drama of the Flying Dutchman with its " damna-
tion " motive belonging to the captain, and its " salvation '
motive given to the bride its sailor's subject its pilot's
424 WAGNER.
song its spinning-wheel home-melody and its stormy " Ho I
e ho 1 " chorus. The whole drama is shadowed forth in the
magic and tempestuous overture, and stands out as this com-
poser's first straightforward desertion of history proper, and
adoption of myth as the special medium of the new Musical
Drama.
Six weeks of ceaseless labour, which to WAGNER were
weeks of spontaneous and joyful production, sufficed to com-
plete the music of the Flying Dutchman. The immediate
result in Paris was ludicrous. The music was instantly
judged to be absurd, and WAGNER was forced to sell the
libretto, which was handed over to a Frenchman, one M. P.
FOUCHE, who could write music. It appeared, with that
gentleman's approved setting, under the title of Le Vais-
seau Fantome.
This was enough ! No lower depth could well be reached,
and WAGNER was preparing to leave Paris to the tender
mercies of ROSSINI, MEYERBEER, and M. P. FOUCHE, when
news reached him from Germany that Rienzi, flouted in the
capital of taste, had been accepted in Berlin and Dresden !
It was the spring of 1842, and it was also the rapid and
wondrous turn of the tide for WAGNER. He hurried to
322. Dresden, to find the rehearsals of Rienzi already
advanced. The opera was produced with that
8TJCC E 8 8 )
BIEKZI, 1842. singular burst of enthusiasm which greets the
first appreciation of an important but long-neglected truth,
EIENZI, 1842.TANNRAUSER, 1845. 425
and WAGNER, having become the favourite of the Crown
Prince, was elected Kapellmeister at Dresden, and found
himself for the first time famous. Some might now have
rested on their laurels, but to WAGNER'S imperious develop-
ment Rienzi was already a thing of the past. He had
drunk of the crystalline waters of popular myth, and was
still thirsty. The Flying Dutchman had opened up a new
world to him, more real because more exhaustive of human
feelings and character than the imperfect types and broken
episodes of real history. He seemed to stand where the
fresh springs of inspiration welled up from a virgin soil ;
he listened to the child-like voices of primitive peoples,
inspired from the simple heart of Nature, and babbling
eternal verities without knowing it. Legend was the rough
ore the plastic element he could seize and remould, as
^ESCHYLUS remoulded Prometheus, or SOPHOCLES GEdipus,
adding philosophic analysis and the rich adornments of
poetic fancy and artistic form.
The legend of Tannhduser now engrossed him. The
drama was soon conceived and written. There he summed
up, in a few glowing scenes, the opposition
52wt
TANNHAOSEK, bet ween that burst of free sensuous life at the
Renaissance, and the hard, narrow ideal of Papal
Christianity. Christ not only crowned with thorns, but
turned into stone, is all the answer that Christianity had
to give to that stormy impulse which at last poured its
420 WAGNER.
long pent-up torrent over Europe. The deep revolt still
stares us in the face from the Italian canvases, as we look
at the sensuous figures of RAPHAEL or TITIAN the free
types of fair breathing life, surrounded with the hard
aureole of the artificial saint, or limned as in mockery, like
the dreams of a pagan world upon the walls of the Vatican.
Tannhauser, a Tlmringian knight, taking refuge with
Venus, no longer the beneficent Holda, joy of gods and men,
but turned by the excesses of the ascetic spirit into a malign
witch, and banished to the bowels of the earth in the
Venusberg Tannhauser, with a touch eternally true to
nature, bursting the fetters of an unruly sensual life, and
sighing for a healthier activity Tannhauser seeing for
a moment only, in the pure love of woman, the reconcilia-
tion of the senses with the spirit, a reconciliation made for
ever impossible by the stupid bigotry of a false form of
religion, but which is ultimately sealed and accomplished
by love and death in heaven; this is the human and
sublime parable of the drama, wrought out with the fervour
of a religious devotee, and epitomized in that prodigious
overture wherein the dirge of the Church mingles with the
free and impassioned song of the minstrel knight, and
clashes wildly with the voluptuous echoes of the fatal
Venusberg.
WAGNER'S progress was now checked by that storm of
invective which burst out all over the art world of Germany
not on account of Runzi, but in consequence of the
LOHENGRIN, 1847. 48.7
Flying Dutchman, and especially of Tannhduser. The reason
is simple. The power of Rienzi, the audacity of its senti-
ment, the simplicity of its outline, and the realism of its
mise en scene, together with a general respect for the old
opera forms, ensured it a hearing which resulted in a legiti-
mate triumph. But in Tannhduser the new path was already
struck out, which singers, band, audience, critics, and com-
posers, in a body, refused to tread in short, aria, recitative,
and ballet were dethroned, and suddenly found themselves
servants where they had been masters.
In 1843, the Flying Dutchman was produced at Dresden,
and failed. Rienzi was still revived with success. WAGNER
now sent the Dutchman and Tannhduser to
various theatres. The former was tried at Berlin
FAILURES.
in 1844, and failed. SPOIIR had the intelligence
to take it up at Cassel, and wrote a friendly and appre-
ciative letter to WAGNER; but the MS. scores were, as a
rule, returned by the other theatres, and the new operas
seemed to react on the earlier success, for at Hamburgh
Rienzi failed.
Meanwhile, failure, together with the close sympathy of
a few devoted friends, convincing him that he
OO.
LOHENGRIN, was more right than ever, WAGNER now threw
I QAf
himself into the completion of that work which is
perhaps of the whole his most perfect, as it certainly is his
428 WAGNEE.
most popular creation, Lohengrin. The superb acting and
singing of MDLLES. TITIENS, NILSSON, and ALBANI, will be
fresh in the minds of many readers. The choruses in
England have never yet been up to the mark, but the band
under SIR MICHAEL COSTA, at its best, rendered the
wondrous prelude to perfection.
The whole of Lohengrin is in that prelude. The descent
of the Knight of the Swan from the jasper shrines of the
sacred palace of Montsalvat, hidden away in a distant
forest land his holy mission to rescue Elsa from her false
accusers his high and chivalric love his dignified trouble
at being urged by her to reveal his name, that insatiable
feminine curiosity which wrecks the whole the darker
scenes of treachery by which Elsa is goaded on to press
her fatal inquiry the magnificent climax of the first act
the sense of weird mystery that hangs about the appearance
and re-appearance of the swan, and the final departure of
the glittering Knight of the Sangraal allegory of heavenly
devotion stooping to lift up human love and dashed with
earth's bitterness in the attempt ; to those who understand
the pathos, delicacy, and full intensity of the Lohengrin
prelude, this and more will become as vivid as art and
emotion can make it. Lohengrin in its elevation, alike in
its pain, its sacrifice, and its peace, is the necessary reaction
from that wreck of sensual passion and religious despair so
vividly grasped in the scenes of the Venusberg, in the
pilgrim chant and the wayside crucifix of Tannh'duser.
NEGLECT AND EXILE, 1S47-57. 429
Lohengrin was finished in 1847, but the political events
of the next few years brought WAGNER'S career in Germany
326. to an abrupt conclusion. His growing dissatis-
NEGLECT f ac tion with society coincided, unconsciously no
1847-57. doubt, with the failure of his operas after that
first dawn of success. He now devoted himself to criticism
and politics. He read SCHOPENHAUER, whose pessimist
philosophy did not tend to soothe his perturbed spirit ; and
during the next ten years, from 1847 to 1857, he spoke to the
world from different places of exile in that series of political
and sesthetical pamphlets to which I have before alluded.
In 1855, owing to the earnest advocacy of such friends
as M. FERDINAND PRAEGER, who for thirty years, through
evil report and good report, had never ceased
327.
LONDON, to support WAGNER, the Philharmonic Society
invited him over to London, and whilst here
he conducted eight concerts. Pie was not popular; he
was surprised to find that the band thought it unneces-
sary to rehearse, and the band was surprised that he
should require so much rehearsal. But he drove the band
in spite of itself, and the band hated him. They said he
murdered BEETHOVEN with his baton, because of the free-
dom and inspiration of his readings. MENDELSSOHN'S
Scotch symphony had been deliberately crushed or it was
the only thing that went according to which paper you
happened to read. He did not care for the press, and he
430 WAGNER.
was not much surprised that the press did not care for him.
The unfailing musical intelligence of the Queen and Prince
Albert was the one ray of sunlight in this his second visit
to our inhospitable land, but the power of the man could not
be hid, even from his enemies ; his culture astonished the
half-educated musicians by whom he was surrounded, his
brilliant originality impressed even his own friends, who
saw him struggling through an imperfect acquaintance
with French and English to make himself understood.
One evening, alone in company with M. SAINTON, HECTOR
BERLIOZ, and FERDINAND PRAEGER, WAGNER surprised them
all by suddenly launching out on art, music, and philosophy.
BERLIOZ was an elegant speaker, accustomed to lead easily,
but WAGNER, with his torrent of broken French and his
rush of molten ideas, silenced, bewildered, delighted, and
astonished them all. BERLIOZ is gone, but that night still
lives in the memory of those who were present who survive,
and from whose lips I have the incident.
Thus WAGNER passed through England for a second time,
leaving behind him a vague impression of power and eccen-
tricity, the first of which the musical press did its best to
kill, whilst fanning the second into a devouring flame which
swallowed up WAGNER'S reputation. Notwithstanding the
exertions of a few devoted believers, twenty-one years flitted
by, and little enough was heard of RICHARD WAGNER in
this country until, owing to the increasing agitation of a
younger school of musicians, foremost among whom we
VON BULOW'S INFLUENCE. 431
must name MR. EDWARD DANNREUTHER and MR. WALTER
BACIIE, the Flying Dutchman was at last indifferently pro-*
duced at Covent Garden. I well remember the occasion.
ILMA DI MURSKA played Senta admirably well, though too
old for the part ; and, notwithstanding the efforts of MR.
SANTLEY, the recitative music was nearly unintelligible,
owing to want of intelligence on the part of the band.
The whole thing was clumsily put on the stage, and Senta's
solos and the choruses alone pleased.
In 1874 HER HANS VON BULOW, pupil of LISZT and great
exponent of WAGNER'S music, came over, and by his wonder-
328. ful playing, aided steadily by the periodical
VON BULOW'B WAGNERIAN and LISZT concerts given by MESSRS.
INFLUENCE, *
1874 - DANNREUTHER and BACIIE, at which BULOW con-
ducted WAGNER'S music, brought about the rise of the new
WAGNER movement in England, which received its develop-
ment in the interest occasioned by the Bayreuth Festival,
and reached its climax in the WAGNER Festival actively
promoted by HERR WILHELMJ, and undertaken by MESSRS.
HODGES and ESSEX, in 1877, at the Albert Hall.
MINA, WAGNER'S first wife, was now dead. I cannot here
329. tell at length how LISZT (whose daughter,
CIPRIANI C OSIMA YON BULOW, became WAGNER'S second
POTTER Oil
WAGNER. w jf e j n 1870) laboured at Weimar with untiring
zeal to produce WAGNER'S works, and how his efforts were
432 WAGNER.
at last crowned with success all over Germany in 1849-50.
It was a popular triumph. I remember old CIPRIANI
POTTER, the friend of BEETHOVEN, saying to me at the
time when the English papers teemed with the usual
twaddle about WAGNER'S music being intelligible only to
the few, " It is all very well to talk this stuff here, but
in Germany it is the people, the common people, who
crowd to the theatre when Tannhduser and Lohengrin are
given." I have noticed the same at the Covent Garden
concerts j it was always the pit and gallery who called for
the WAGNER nights, whilst the opera which had the great
run with CARL ROSA'S English Company was the Flying
Dutchman, whilst Tannhciuser and Lohengrin at both houses
were invariably the crowded nights.
In 1861 the .Parisians showed their taste and chic by
whistling Tannhduser off the stage.
In 1863 WAGNER appeared at Vienna, Prague, Leipsic,
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Pesth, and conducted concerts with
g30 brilliant success. In 1864 his constant friend,
TOE the Crown Prince, now Ludwig II. of Bavaria,
TETRALOGIB
MEISTER. summoned him to Munich, where the new operas
of Tristan in 1865, and Meistersinger in 1868,
Dis Rheingold in 1869, and Die Walkilre in 1870, were
successively given with ever-increasing appreciation and
annlause.
The Meistersinger, through which there runs a strongly
THE TETBALOGIE NE1STER. TRISTAN. 433
comic vein, deals with the contrast between the old stiff
forms of minstrelsy by rule and the spontaneous revolt of
a free, musical, and poetical genius, and the work forms a
humorous and almost Shaksperean pendant to the great and
solemn minstrelsy which fills the centre of Tannhcluser. In
WAGNER s opinion it is the opera most likely to find favour
with an English audience, a point since established by the
German opera performances under RICHTER.
Tristan and Iseult, in which the drama and analysis of
passion love and death is wrought up to its highest pitch,
was thrown off between the two first and two last great
sections of the Tetralogie, and the Tctralogie, itself planned
twenty years ago and produced at Bayreuth in 1876,
seemed the last most daring and complete manifesta-
tion of WAGNER'S dramatic, poetic, and musical genius,
until Parsifal revealed still greater heights and depths in
1882.
The purpose and power of that great cycle of Scandi-
navian and German myths, unrolled in the four colossal
dramas of Rheingold, Walkure, Siegfried, and Goiter dam-
merung, would carry me far beyond the limits of a biograph-
ical chapter. Both the Ring and the Parsifal I dwell upon
at some length in my account of the performances at
Bayreuth of 1876, and the memorial performances of
1883.
I will now give a sketch of the general impression that
28
434 WAGNER.
WAGNER made upon me and upon others with whom he
came in contact, and I shall conclude these
331.
WAGNER'S biographical pages with a notice of his last
days in Venice and his funeral at Bayreuth.
WAGNER offended a great many people in the course of
his life, but then a great many people offended WAGNER.
Those who hated him lied about him unscrupulously,
but not even his worst enemies ever accused WAGNER
of lying about them. He was an egotist in the sense
that he believed in himself; but, then, one must re-
member that in his own estimation for more than forty
years, RICHARD WAGNER had been the greatest figure in
the musical world, and that it took quite thirty years of his
life to convince the world of that fact which now, for about
a couple of years, we have had proclaimed by all the news-
papers of Europe. If in general company his manner was
reserved, and even a little acrid, was there not a cause ?
Such a man, with an immense consciousness of power, meet-
ing with marvellous neglect, and trampled upon, but never
crushed, by penury, misfortune, and the bitterest persecu-
tion and ridicule, naturally becomes an egotist, and is apt
to play the king in disguise, and behave, even in the midst
of insult, as if he expected all men to bow down before
him ; and then as naturally, when at last they do bow down
in the most abject of attitudes, he feels a little inclined to
kick them.
When I remember that about forty years ago Rienzi, and
WAGNERS EGOTISM. 435
the Flying Dutchman, followed by Tannhduser and Lohen-
grin, were finished, that the master then truly of the
future was patronised here, snubbed there, and supported
himself by arranging tunes for the cornet-a-piston and
piano that he starved a little, was banished for his
opinions, nearly shipwrecked, and altogether unable to get
anybody except FERDINAND PRAEGER, LISZT (perhaps M. .
SAINTON and half-a-dozen intimes, some of them as un-
recognised as himself) to believe in him at all why, if
there ever was a training for egotism, that was ! In fact,
for nearly half a century there was no one to believe
in RICHARD WAGNER except RICHARD WAGNER. Then,
by-and-by, the crowned heads, and, what was more to
the point, the heads of opera-houses, came round, and we
had bowing and scraping on all sides; an-d connoisseurs
arrived, cap in hand, to interview the great man, and tell
him to his face " RICHARD WAGNER, we deem you one of
the greatest musicians that ever lived." " Bah ! " says
WAGNER, " I told you that forty years ago ; I can do with-
out you now ! " " Oh, fie ! what a vain man ! " said your
offended aristocrat. I never thought RICHARD WAGNER
vain. I knew him to be irritable so are other people, who
only resemble him in that. I knew him to be impatient of
interruption so is your banking-clerk when stopped in the
middle of a column of figures. I knew him to be proud so
are many who have nothing to be proud of; and from the
first moment that I heard, now twenty years ago, the pre-
28 *
436 WAGNER.
lude to Lohengrin, and read a few of his letters on art, I
also knew RICHARD WAGNER to be the greatest composer and
the most impressive art-personality then alive in the world.
WAGNER'S was certainly one of the strongest and most
independent natures I ever came across. The ordinary
motives which move men had no power with him.
332.
WAS WAGNER He cared neither for money nor for rank, nor for
the opinions of his contemporaries. He has been
charged with a childish love of display, and it is true that
from the simplest and most retiring life he would suddenly
pass to the most splendid and imposing scale of living ; as
when on one occasion he entered Heidelberg in a carriage
drawn by four horses with outriders. He was fond of beau-
tiful surroundings, and he would dress expensively ; but in
these peculiarities anyone who understood WAGNER would
easily see, that his excitable and artistic temperament found
in these contrasts and accessories the stimulus most favour-
able to his ceaseless and buoyant productivity, rather than
the mere freaks of personal vanity.
Athough the most intimate friend of the KING OP
BAVARIA, he was not a man whom princes could order
about or control. I remember very well his
333.
WAONEB AND refusing to exhibit himself to order in the box
*' of a certain high personage at the Albert Hall
when he was in England, although he readily availed him-
WAGNER AT HOME. 437
self of the privilege of visiting Her Majesty at Windsor.
WAGNER never forgot that the QUEEN and PRINCE ALBERT
recognised his genius on the occasion of his first visit to
England, and his illustrious patrons were then in a very
small minority.
WAGNER was adored by his household. He lived for
some time at Lucerne in great retirement he was then
working at the Einy. A friend who had at that
oo4.
WAGNER AT time frequent access to him, has given us some
charming WAGNERIAN side-lights. Nervous and
intensely impressionable, \ve are told his sentiments always
ran into extremes, but his self-recovery was rapid. He
sometimes wounded even his friends by the intense and
passionate sincerity of his language ; but he atoned so
sweetly for a passing heat of temper, that they loved
him only the more. " In WAGNER," said one of his
orchestra at Bayreuth, " it is the second movement that is
good."
His life in Switzerland was as regular as it was laborious.
He rose at six bathed then reclined and read till ten
breakfasted worked uninterruptedly from eleven till two
dined rested, always with a book in hand drove from four
till six worked from six till eight supped, and spent the
evening in the midst of his family.
It was in these evenings that WAGNER was most charm-
438 WAGNER.
ing. Every cloud was cleared from his brow ; his face
seemed radiant with a certain light-hearted good-
335.
WAGNER'S ness which diffused a happy atmosphere around
r ' him. He had a kind word for everyone, he
entered into everything, and his conversation scintillated
with brilliancy and humour. His boundless liberality
sometimes brought him into pecuniary difficulties ; he could
never bear to see anyone in want ; he had known too much
of it himself.
His poor relations took advantage of him. His rustic
family connections seemed to rise out of the earth wherever
he stood, and claim his assistance or protection. They
would come on a visit and forget to leave; they would
drop in at meal-time; they would use his name, order
things of his tradespeople and forget to pay, travel under
his prestige, and lodge at his expense.
His heart was larger than his pocket his generosity
far exceeded the discretion of those who traded upon
it. A French nobleman, COUNT GOBINEAU, said of him,
" HERR WAGNER will never be perfectly happy, for there
will always be someone at his elbow whose suffering or
distress he will feel bound to share." As a rule the
French spoke no good of WAGNER nor WAGNER of the
French.
I once spent an evening in Paris at VICTOR HUGO'S house.
It was not long after the Franco-Prussian War. The talk
VICTOR HUGO ON WAGNER. 439
ran on WAGNER. The aged poet at once turned the conver-
sation. Somewhat rashly, perhaps, I ventured to
OOO.
VICTOR HUGO say, " Surely in the great republic of art national
ON WAGNER. . . . , . ,
or even personal antipathies need not count.
VICTOR HUGO cut me very short. " Monsieur/' he said,
" il a dit beaucoup de mal de mon pays il a insulte la
France. I cannot hear his music.'*
In some things WAGNER was as simple and tender as a
child so true is it that there is a child-like element in most
337. men of genius. His agility was surprising; he
ALIGHT* 1 ' 8 was ^ on< ^ ^ clirabing the trees in his garden.
HEARTEDNESS. On such occasions MADAME WAGNER would say
to his friends, " I beseech you do not look at him, or
encourage him, he will only run greater risks ! "
When he was up early, he would go round to the other
bed-room doors and wake the sleepers by intoning the
" Marseillaise " (he was a shocking red republican, this
bosom friend of the King) to the accompaniment of what
has been called the " devil's tattoo/'
He was very fond of animals, especially dogs ; his
favourite dog "Mark" is buried not far from his own
grave. The Meistersinger was arrested for
338.
KINDNESS TO months in consequence of attentions paid to a
poor dog he had met wandering sick and master-
less. The ungrateful animal bit his hand, and for months
410 WAGNER.
WAGNER was unable to hold a pen, but the dog was equally
well cared for.
Like LISZT, he was a strong opponent of vivisection,
and was fond of quoting FAUST'S saying to scientific
doctors : " The very dogs wouldn't live in such a world as
yours ! "
When not absolutely absorbed in his work, he was most
thoughtful for others, and was always planning for their
339. comfort and happiness ; and, although quick and
WAGNER'S R j. times irritable, he could bear suffering calmly.
UNSELFISH-
NESS. On one occasion a lady remarked that he had
been singularly sweet and amiable all day on a pleasure
excursion, at a time when he was in actual physical suffering
himself. He confessed at the end that he had felt very
unwell, but had tried to hide this from those about him for
fear of spoiling their enjoyment.
He was naturally adored by his servants, who stayed
with him so long that they became like members of the
family. He had an extraordinary power of attracting
people to his person. There was something irresistibly
magnetic about that brilliant eye, that noble penetrating
look, that insatiable and unresting vigour of emotion and
intellect.
LISZT, DE BULOW, RICHTER, WILHELMJ, and all his staff
of artists, were absolutely devoted to him, and gave him
TOUKOWSKI AND WAGNER. 441
years of willing service which no money could have paid for
340. or secured. The talented painter, PAUL Tou-
TOUKOWSKI KOWSKI i e t his atelier at Naples to come and
AND
WAGNER. }i ve a t Bayreuth and paint the Parsifal scenery ;
and what scenery it is ! What a dream of summer-land
is the moor and woodland in the domain of Mont Salvat !
What a majestic and gorgeous hall, of more than Eastern
magnificence, is that in which the mystery of the Sangrail is
enacted ! What dim forests, what enchanted caves, what
massive walls and battlements, what enchanted bowers, what
more than tropical bloom and foliage ! It was long before
the artist could satisfy WAGNER with that magic garden.
The master would have the flowers as large as the girls, and
he would have the girls exactly like the flowers. It was
difficult; but it is enough to say that WAGNER willed it,
and it was done.
His influence with the actors was supreme; never would
they have attempted for another what they did for him.
341. The Rhine girls were terrified at the cages in
WAGNEK they had to be swung up and down in the
*
AND TUB
SINGERS. Rhine depths, singing all the time. They refused
at first to face a situation which appeared more fit for
acrobats than for dramatic artists. They would not get
into their cages at all, until the master, with tears in his
eyes, besought them to try, and then all went easily, and
more than well.
442 WAGNER.
MADAME TITIENS had scruples at first about the Wag-
nerian parts as unsingable, but in her latter days she was
quite "fanatise" about the part of Ortrud, in which she
was superb, and she used to declare that WAGNER'S roles
gave her the fullest and freest scope for her vocalisation
and acting. The singer SCHNOR, who was identified with
the part of Tristram, when he was told on his death-bed
of the preparations for the performance of the Niebelungen
Ring at Bayreuth, exclaimed it was his last regret " Then,
after all, I shall never sing Siegfried."
I confess I came fully under WAGNER'S spell I spent a
delightful evening at his house in 1876. It was at the close
342. of the first Bayreuth festival. All the corps
AN EVENING <3 rama tic were present RICHTER the conductor
AT WAGNER 8
HOUSE. was chatting with WILHELMJ, the leader of the
orchestra, when I went up to him and asked him whether
he had recruited his strength well at Nurenberg. There a
few nights before I had met him in company with PROFESSOR
ELLA, and in the quiet old city of ALBERT DURER whither
he had escaped for a rest between the continued perform-
ances of the Ring we had spent an evening over a good
bottle of Rhine wine, amid the fumes of those detestable
black cheroots which LISZT was so fond of.
Then I caught sight of WALTER BACHE, who introduced
me to LISZT ; and presently RICHTER took me up and
presented me to WAGNER.
AN EVENING AT WAGNER'S HOUSE. 443
His face beamed -with kindness and geniality; he spoke
French, said he had been in England long long ago, and would
perhaps come again. He had great doubts whether the
English were sufficiently serious in art ever to appreciate his
Ring, and seemed pleased when I told him of the great
popularity of his music at the Promenade Concerts, and the
increasing appreciation of Lohengrin and Tannhduser.
" Earlier works/' he said, shrugging his shoulders.
And MATERNA, the unique Briinnhilde, was there. WAG-
NER had taken endless trouble in forming her for the
Niebelungen Ring and the great part she was to play; and
master and pupil always entertained the liveliest admiration
and affection for each other, which sometimes took an
amusing and demonstrative form. That night, when Briinn-
hilde, an immense woman, arrived en grande toilette, and
wearing some of her best jewels, she bore directly down
upon WAGNER a spare, short, fragile little man. Her
enormous bulk seemed to extinguish him for a moment.
On reaching him with difficulty in the midst of the
glittering crowd she embraced him rapturously German
fashion with "Ach, HERR WAGNER! ''
WAGNER stood it like a man ; but towards the close of the
evening I beheld the MATERNA bearing down upon him
again, and as she neared him he held up both his hands
energetically repelling a second attack, "Nein, nein, Frau
MATERNA, das will ich gar nicht,'' and poor Briinnhilde had
to put up with a hand -shake instead.
444 WAGNER.
I saw him. again in England it was on that very evening
he declined to go with me to be presented to a Royal
Princess at the house of a well-known nobleman. If I have
cause to regret that circumstance I have also cause to
remember that evening with some satisfaction not only
did I hear him read one act of his Parsifal, but I received
from him a singular token of personal regard. I remember
LISZT telling me with some pride how he had received the
celebrated " Kiss of BEETHOVEN " BEETHOVEN was not
in the habit, it seems, of embracing people. I now recall
with a feeling of singular satisfaction the occasion on which
WAGNER favoured me in the same way, with a kiss.
He advanced towards me as I suddenly entered the room
with " Ach mein lieber HERR HAWEIS, was haben Sie den
iiber mich schon geschriebcn ! " and so saying, taking me
by both elbows, he saluted me on both cheeks in the
orthodox manner.
WAGNER'S friendship with the KING OF BAVARIA had no
doubt contributed largely to the realization of all his plans
during his own life-time. The notion of building
343.
WAGNEB'S a special theatre where the orchestra should be
out of sight the seats arranged tier above tier,
\vith a single row of boxes and a gallery above them had
been long in his mind.
The King was anxious for the theatre to be in Munich;
but the opposition of the Court, on account of WAGNER'S
WAGNER'S CONDUCTING. 445
political opinions, was then too great. Later on the hotel-
keepers offered to build a theatre there on their own
account, and to carry out WAGNER'S plans free of charge as
a speculation.
WAGNER declined. He chose Bayreuth. He was beholden
to none save the King and his own followers. They had
stood by him, rehearsed his fame, produced his works, and
they built his theatre; but every detail was directed by
WAGNER, and the perfection which the Bayreuth perform-
ances have at last reached is due to the same exhaustive and
unremitting personal care.
It was only natural that the master should yield the
baton to a friend like RICHTER, whose experience, physique,
and consummate talent would enable him to per-
344.
WAGNER'S f cct the executive part of the work ; but it was
CONDUCTING. . ., T? 1 J i Tir I.' If
my privilege in .England to see WAGNER himscli
conduct some of his own music at the Albert Hall. Some
said he had already lost nerve as a conductor, and, indeed,
had never possessed the requisite patience. That may have
been to some extent true, but it did not strike me. I went
home and wrote the following note, which I see no reason
to alter now :
" WAGNER'S notion is evidently not to rave, but to com-
mand, and to deal with his men as one who gives them
credit for knowing their own business, instead of treating
tli em like a set of raw recruits, who have to be "bullied,
446 WAGNER.
shouted at, sworn to, and licked into shape from end to
end. The most intense power, concentration, and active
energy is often the most silent. Look at the silent, irre-
sistible weight of the fly-wheel that drives the machinery
of a large manufactory, or the noiseless swing of the steam
hammer, or the intense, but silent, and apparently motion-
less vigour of the poised eagle, or the rapt calmness of a
MOLTKE, who watches from the hill-side every evolution of
the troops inspired by him. Only occasionally does he
raise his telescope, pointing his hand, or sending out scouts
and subalterns ; and in proportion as all goes well, is fitly
inspired, is the embodiment of his will is he calm. So
the " listless '' WAGNER sits and orders his band, and they
know his mind and obey his look, and heed his smallest
gesture, often even quite unperceived by the audience ; and
this worries the critics. "With the best intentions they can't
make it out, who are used to their hop, skip, and a jump,
and their one, two, three and away conductors ! Doubtless,
but the old man wins."
A French critic has since written: "WAGNER plays
on the orchestra as though it were a gigantic fiddle,
with a firmness of touch which never fails him, and
sovereign authority before which all are happy in bowing
down. To have an idea of so extraordinary a conductor,
one must have seen him/' I do not therefore imply
that WAGNER in his last years was fitted to go through
the kind of drudgery which RICHTER willingly under-
THE FESTIVALS OF 1876-82. 447
took, and which culminated in the triumph of 1876 at
Bayreuth.
The close of WAGNER'S life was crowned by the two great
Olympian-like festivals in 1876 and 1882. The Memorial
845. Festival in 1883 was his requiem ; whilst the
1118 whole of the city was resounding with his name
FESTIVALS *
OF 187G-82. an( j fame^ the great master's body lay at rest in
a funereal bower adjoining the Neue Schloss. The event
of 1876 was, I suppose, unprecedented in the annals of
Modern Art. I have devoted to it a separate notice. It
was my privilege to witness the first unfolding of those
four colossal musical dramas of the Nibelung's Ring on
the Bayreuth stage. People had assembled from all parts
of the civilised world; kings, princes, and nobles mingled
in that motley throng. The dramas lasted every day from
four till ten, with intervals of an hour between the acts.
The whole population lived only in the life of that great
cycle of tragedies in which gods, demi-gods, and mortals
acted out, with more than earthly intensity, the perennially
interesting dramas of human life and passion.
It was between the Festival of 1876 at Bayreuth, and the
346. performance of Parsifal in 1882, that WAGNEII
THE WAGNER came ^0 England to assist at the presentation of
MANIA IN
LONDON, the Ring music at the Albert Hall. He was
shaken in health, and exceedingly indisposed to take any
448 WAGNER.
exertion not directly bearing upon his work which was
the new Parsifal drama. He was not satisfied with his
reception at the Albert Hall. He was much courted in
society, but avoided anything like public receptions, and was
considered over-retiring and reticent by casual observers.
The WAGNER furor being now on the increase after his
departure, the two principal London theatres were opened
in the spring and summer of 1880 Covent Garden for
the performance of the Nibelung's Ring, and Drury Lane
for the presentation of all his other operas seriatim.
Neither proved a commercial success, the market being
thus quite over-stocked. But the WAGNER excitement was
still on the increase, and when the Parsifal came to be pro-
duced at Bayreuthin 1882, Bayreuth was as thronged as in
1876. I was not present at that festival, but I have given
a special account of the Memorial performance which I
attended in the following year.
WAGNER died suddenly on the 13th of February 1883,
at Venice., whither he had come to recruit after the Parsifal
performances in 1882, and to prepare for their
renewal in the following year. He was cut
TO VENICE.
off in the full vigour of his productive genius.
Time had not dimmed his eye, nor shaken his hand, nor
closed a single channel of thought or emotion. He sank
thus suddenly in the spring of the year 1883, not without
Borne warning, yet enjoying life up to its latest hour. " I
HIS TEMPERAMENTAL VIGOUR. 419
bear no longer the grey clouds and wintry skies of
Bayreuth," he had said to his friends in the autumn of 1882.
A suite of apartments in the Palace Vendramin at Venice
had been secured for him, and his children DANIEL, EVA,
ISOLDE, and SIEGFRIED (now twelve years old) were already
there. Venice was in the greatest excitement on his arrival.
Italy had been in the strangest way won over to WAGNER
at Bologna, under the able and enthusiastic baton of a la-
mented Maestro ; indeed, LISZT told me he had never heard
WAGNER'S operas more effectively given, except at Bayreuth.
It was WAGNER'S desire to be left quiet at Venice, and
his wishes were sedulously respected ; but he was never
348. inaccessible, and he was often to be found in
ms TEMPE- ^g Q a fg surrounded by a group of friends. The
RAMENTAL *
VIGOUR. fi rs t remark of the Venetians who saw that spare,
vivid figure, with flashing eye, and who heard the master's
eager eloquent conversation, full of wit and geniality, was,
f( Why, he is not an old man at all ! " It is true, there is
something of the eternal child an afflatus of divine youth
about all great genius.
WAGNER rose in Italy at Venice between five and
six, and worked till ten. In Venice he wrote
349.
HIS his last art criticisms ; and whilst the Italian
MORNING. ro -i ,i i i 1
newspapers affirmed that he was already at
work upon a drama connected with Buddha and the great
29
450 WAGNER.
Aryan legends, the German prints declared that he had
turned his attention towards Greece, and was going to
Athens to try and recover on the spot something connected
with the ancient Greek music. At the same time he was
indefatigable in his efforts to prepare for the repetitions of
Parsifal in 1883, at which he intended to be present and
which were carried out at Bayreuth with such magnificent
success July 1883 in sad memory of his death.
He was already suffering from heart-disease, and sat
usually the weather being chilly in his fur coat. A glass
of wine was always at hand, and when he suffered pain he
would sip cognac.
His rooms, however, before breakfast were sacred, and his
wife COSIMA scrupulously respected them ; but at ten o'clock
sbe went in to bring him his letters, and after a short
private chat the family breakfasted together. WAGNER would
then take his hat and go down the marble steps looking
out upon the canal, and ask his gondolier about the weather.
If too cold to venture out he would stroll forth, often with
his wife, and go into LAVENNA'S, the pastrycook's, and buy
bon-bons for the children.
Between four and six o'clock he might often be seen in
the arcades and streets, with all the family,
ooO.
HIS buying little presents for friends, or sipping
AFTKRXOOX. n -icii it i r 11
conee or the good fresh beer beloved 01 all true
Germans. The military band which played occasionally in
HIS AFTERNOON. 451
the great square had produced a version of the Lohen-
grin overture in his honour, but played it in such fashion
that poor WAGNER was constrained to take refuge in
the pastrycook's shop and stop his ears with both
hands.
On another occasion, however, he went up to the band-
master, in his great coat and slouched hat, and asked him
to play something out of ROSSINI'S Gazza Ladra. The con-
ductor, not recognising WAGNER, answered civilly that he
had none of the music there, and otherwise could not well
derange the programme. On WAGNER retiring a musician
told the bandmaster who the stranger was. Filled with
confusion and regret, the worthy man instantly sent for
copies of the Gazza Ladra selection, and played it for two
consecutive days. WAGNER was much pleased, and, again
going up to the band, expressed his thanks, and praised
especially the solo cornet, who had much distinguished
himself.
The master dined early in the afternoon, and usually took
a short nap afterwards, the faithful BETTY BURKEL, a confi-
dential family servant, always being at hand in the next
room, knitting quietly.
At half -past three the gondolier was usually in attend-
ance, and in fine weather the Lido, the public gardens, the
San Lazzaro, and Giudecca were visited.
In the milder autumn days of 1882, WAGNER, whose
29 *
452 WAGNER.
breathing was occasionally oppressed, seemed to inhale new
351. health and vigour out upon the wide lagunes.
WAGNER
sa y drawing a long breath :
AND BYRON * '
LOVE LIGHT. I)O smo ke, no dust ! " At night his sitting-
rooms were a blaze of light with quantities of wax-candles.
People used to look up at BYRON'S quarters when he was in
Venice, and wonder what festival could be going on. The
waters of the Grand Canal were all aglow, but it was only
BYRON, alone with the MSS. of Manfred, Parisina, and
Don Juan. WAGNER'S old porter happened to be brother
to BYRON'S old servant, FIDO. " There is something like
BYRON about this great German," he remarked. " What is
that ? '' they asked. " Why, he has the same marvellous
need of wax candles ! " " Where light is there is joy/*
WAGNER used to say, quoting the Italian proverb.
As the evenings drew in, WAGNER used to read aloud to
his family usually from some dramatic author. He some-
times got so excited that the good people in the house
knocked at the door to know if anything ailed the master?
When absorbed in thought, he was in the habit of pacing
up and down the room, with his hands behind him. He
even had pockets made at the back of his coat. DR. KEP-
TLER said this position of the arms allowed him to breathe
more freely, and eased the diseased action of the heart.
On November 19, 1882, LISZT came to see him at Venice.
The two old men embraced each other affectionately on
LISZT'S VISIT TO WAGNER. 453
the marble stairs. They sat long hours together in deep
and friendly converse. JOUKOVSKI. the artist,
352. J '
LISZT'S VISIT who had painted the Parsifal scenery, and for
whom the genius of WAGNER had an irresistible
attraction, was also there. He painted a remarkable por-
trait of LISZT, and a " Sacred Family " of JESUS, JOSEPH,
and MARY. The guardian angels in the air above were
all portraits of WAGNER'S children.
LISZT was usually up at four o'clock, and both WAGNER
and LISZT got through a great deal of serious work in those
small hours.
WAGNER'S personal popularity at Venice was extraordi-
nary. In a short time he and every member of his family
353. were known even to the children of the poor.
WAGNEB rj-^e mas t er was open-handed and sympathetic to
BELOVED BT J f
THE PEOPLE. a n n e seemed ever about now with his wife,
or with little EVA, his pet daughter, or SIEGFRIED. He
mixed with' the people, chatted and joked, and was ever
ready to relieve the poor. He was worshipped by his gon-
doliers. "He patted me on the back," said one, "asked
me if I was tired, and said ' Amico mio, so the Carnival has
come to an end.' " The man repeated the incident every-
where, as if it had been the great event of his life. " They
say he is greater than a king ; isn't it so ? " (Egli e piu
di un re, discono non e' mro T) was the common talk in the
streets as he passed.
454 WAGNER.
On December 23, 1882, WAGNER conducted his earliest
symphony at the request of a small circle of friends in
354. celebration of MADAME WAGNER'S birthday. On
STRANGE taking the baton he turned to the musicians and
-
"This is the last time I shall ever conduct.'*
"Why?" they asked.
" Because I shall soon die."
This was not at all his usual mood ; he spoke sometimes
of living till ninety he said that he could hardly finish
the work he had in his mind even then. His doctor knew
that his heart-disease must one day carry him off, but hoped
the end might be delayed for five or six years at least. He
was very sanguine himself, but not ^over-prudent. He took
too much tea and coffee and stimulant; he was deaf to
all warnings, and joked on the doctors forbidding their
patients to indulge in these things without setting them a
good example. But there were moments when his words,
spoken lightly, were unconsciously prophetic of the coming
end. He had taken the utmost delight in the Carnival of
1883 at Venice, and on the first day of Lent said to his
gondolier, "And where is it the fashion to go to-day?"
"To the new necropolis, my gracious master," replied
the man. Arrived at the necropolis, WAGNER alighted
and walked all over the place, admiring the quiet and
reposeful niches and the tastefully laid-out lawns and
shrubberies.
THE APPROACH OF DEATH.
" And was my worshipful sir pleased ? " asked the gondo-
lier.
" Yes. uncommonly," replied WAGNER ; " and I shall soon
find some such quiet spot for my own last resting-place."
Indeed, there were mornings when he would go out and
return breathless in ten minutes. Once at his banker's,
355. and again at the pastrycook's, he was seized with
THE faintness and put into his gondola. He urgently
OF DEATH, begged that his family might not be told of this.
They had their own misgivings. When alone he had been
overheard groaning, and was found sometimes with his hand
pressed to his heart; but he would rally and make light of
it, and soon seemed quite well again ; indeed, on the 12th
(he died on the 13th) he said he felt better than he had done
for weeks the breathing was freer and the pulse regular.
February 13th came black with clouds. The rain poured
in torrents. WAGNER rose as usual, and announced his
wish not to be disturbed till dinner-time, two o'clock. He
had much to do much to finish overmuch indeed, and
the time was short.
The master did not feel quite well, and COSIMA, his wife,
bade BETTY, the servant, take her work and not leave the
ante-room in case her master should call or ring.
The faithful creature seemed to have some presentiment
that all was not right. She listened hour after hour heard
the master striding up and down as was his wont.
WAGNER.
"Wife COSIMA came in from time to time. "The master
works ever/* said BETTY, " and has not called for anything
now he walks to and fro."
At one o'clock WAGNER rang his bell and asked : " Is the
gondola ordered at four o'clock ? Good ; then I will take a
plate of soup up here, for I don't feel very well."
There was nothing unusual about this, for when absorbed
in work he would often thus have his light luncheon
alone.
The servant brought in a plate of soup and retired. All
seemed quiet for some time. Then suddenly a hurried
pacing up and down the room was heard. The
footsteps ceased a sharp cough, checked. BETTY
DEATH.
threw down her work, walked on tip-toe to the
door, and listened with all her ears. She heard one deep
groan; she stood for a moment divided between a resolve
to call CosiMA or break through her master's orders and
go into his room at once. The suspense was soon over.
"BETTY!" It was WAGNER'S voice, very faint. BETTY
rushed in. WAGNER was leaning back on his sofa, his fur
coat was half off, his feet rested on a foot-stool. His face
was fearfully changed his features cadaverous and drawn
down with pain evidently ; with the utmost difficulty he
contrived to murmur, but almost inaudibly, "Call my wife
and the doctor." He never spoke again.
The terrified BETTY rushed off to tell wife COSIMA. The
DEATH.
instant she saw him she cried, " To the doctor, BETTY ! "
DR. KEPPLER was sent for three times ; at last he was found
just finishing an operation. Meanwhile MADAME WAGNER had
sat down by her husband. He immediately laid his head on
her shoulder, groaning, but speechless ; and she placed her
arms about him, and with one hand rubbed his heart, an act
which had sometimes eased him when in pain. His breath-
ing grew softer and lighter, and presently he seemed to
subside into a quiet, motionless sleep. She thought it a
good sign.
About half an hour afterwards the doctor came. One
glance was enough. He found MADAME WAGNER still
holding her husband in both her arms, with his head
resting on her shoulder. " He sleeps," she said and the
good doctor, suppressing his emotion with a great effort, did
not tell her that it was the sleep of death, and that now for
a long time she had been embracing a corpse.
DK. KEPPLER, after feeling for the pulse that was never
to beat again, gently took the body of WAGNER in both his
arms and carried it to his bed. It could not be called his
death-bed, for WAGNER died as he had lived, working the
table before him was strewn with books and MSS., with the
ink scarcely dry upon the last page.
DR. KEPPLER then turned to COSIMA and said, with irre-
pressible emotion, " He is dead ! " The poor wife, who had
been so absolutely one in body, soul, and mind with her
husband, fell prostrate with a great cry upon his lifeless
458 WAGNER.
body, nor for some time could any persuasion induce her to
leave the corpse which she continued to embrace.
But over the intense sorrow of this true-hearted and
affectionate German family I will draw the veil. The
357. servants all seemed to lose their heads. A vast
EXCEPTION crom i h a( j by this time assembled outside the
OF THE *
NEWS. palace " Vendramin." The bulletin had flown
through Venice " RICHARD WAGNER is very ill the doctor
is at his bed-side/' No more than this was known in the
town at half-past four. At half- past five DR. KEPPLER
came down the steps and was greeted with shouts of " The
doctor ! the doctor ! " In the dead silence which followed,
DR. KEPPLER, uncovering his head, said, "RICHARD WAGNER
is dead. He died an hour ago from the effects of heart
disease."
No sooner had DR. KEPPLER pronounced the words
" RICHARD WAGNER is dead ! " from the steps of the
" Vendramin Palace," than the vast throng assembled out-
side to hear the news dispersed with cries of " Dead ! dead ! "
and in a short time there was note a cafe in Venice without
the bulletin " Eiccardo Wagner, il famoso tedesco, il gran
Maestro del Vendramin, b morto" It was commonly said
that since GARIBALDI'S death no such sensation had been
felt in Venice.
The gondolier, who had been ordered by WAGNER at
FUNEEAL HONOURS. 459
four o'clock, had been in attendance ever since. Poor
358. LUIGI heard the news in speechless astonishment
GOND^TIEB'S and S rief > at last > Dreakin S out in SOD8 > ne
TKIBUTE. exclaimed, " Ah ! to think that only yesterday I
rowed him in this gondola the good, noble, great man,
who never said an unkind word to any of us, although he
was so ill ! Here, here is his name '' ; and he held up his
ivory-handled walking-stick with the initials " R. W."
"And now he must needs die Per Bacco ! Poor dear
man ! how many people in this world could have been
better spared ! " LUIGI also took care of a little kitten
which had become a pet of WAGNER'S, having been rescued
by him from an untimely end in the canal. " See," he
would say, " even this kitten he saved from drowning two
months ago knows what it has lost. It will hardly move ;
it lies always here in the gondola, just behind where the
master used to sit."
Ill news in these days of telegraphy flies indeed apace.
The wires were blocked. In the course of the week no
less than five thousand despatches of condolence
FUNERAL reached Venice, addressed to the WAGNER family,
from all parts of the civilised world.
Soon after death WAGNER'S body was embalmed by his
devoted medical attendant, DR. KEPPLER, and a cast of his
face was taken by SIGNOR BENVENUTO.
The bronze coffin, which arrived from Vienna, was carried
460 WAGNER.
upstairs by HANS RICHTER, the painter JOUKOVSKY, DR.
KEPPLER, PASSINI, and RUBEN; and the dead master was
borne to his funereal gondola by the same devoted friends.
The general expressions of sympathy were confined to no
class.
The Italian Government had offered the family a public
ceremony, which was declined ; yet I know not what greater
honour could have been paid him than the spontaneous
grief of all Venice. The high municipal officers, the chief
nobles, and an immense throng accompanied the gondola to
the station. The canals were crowded with gondolas draped
in crape.
In all the ports through which the coffin passed the flags
floated half-mast high. At every town where there was a
stoppage the municipalities sent deputations, and the coffin
was strewn with fresh flowers.
At the head of the bier there was one enormous wreath,
sent by the KING OF BAVARIA, WAGNER'S close friend, and
at Munich the King sent his representative to accompany
tne funeral cortege to Bayreuth.
I will not dwell further upon the honours paid by the
way, the processions of musical societies, the numberless
wreaths, which by the time the coffin reached Bayreuth
amounted to fourteen hundred and filled two large
cars.
On the 17th the bier was received at the station by the
ARRIVAL OF THE COFFIN AT BAYREUTH. 461
inhabitants of Bayreuth en masse. It was a solemn moment
360. when the widow and her children stepped out of
ARRIVAL OP their carriage, and all the people silently un-
TUE COFFIN *
AT BAYRECTH. cov ered their heads.
A brigade of firemen moved in front of the hearse, which
was drawn by four black horses. All the gas lamps were
lighted along the road, and black pennons streamed from
tall poles to right and left. Midway a fresh wreath arrived
from the king with a large inscription, " To the Deathless
One," and at the same time the burgomaster laid another
one on the coffin in the name of the city of Bayreuth.
Arrived at WAGNER'S house, f 'Vahufried" only a select
company were admitted to the garden the coffin rested for
a space at the entrance, but was not taken into the
house.
It was MADAME WAGNER'S express wish that no speeches
or prayers should be made at the grave which had long
since been dug, by WAGNER'S orders, in a retired spot of
his own garden, surrounded by thick bushes and fir-trees.
A simple blessing in the name of the Church was to be
given, and the coffin then lowered in silence.
An immense slab of grey polished granite rested above
it, and the vault door was to be opened on one
o/i
side. Hither was the body now brought by a
THE GRAVE.
silent and sorrowing throng of attached friends,
amongst them LISZT, BULOW, RICHTER, JOUKOVSKY, and
4G2 WAGNER.
many more. On either side walked WAGNER'S children,
and when the coffin was about to be slid into the grave,
they mounted on the grey slab above it and knelt
down.
At this moment WAGNER'S two favourite dogs burst
through the thickets, and sprang towards the children to
seek their usual caresses they, too, had lost a kind master,
but they knew it not.
Then HERR CASELMANN, in the simplest words, com-
mitted the departed, and all his family, to the care of
CHRIST, and blessed the assembly and the grave in the
name of the Church. This was all in exact accordance
with MADAME WAGNER'S wishes. A few took a leaf or a
flower as it fell from the piled-up heap, and the body was
lowered silently into its last resling-place earth to earth
dust to dust !
t
I visited Bayreuth on the 24th of July, 1883, and
attended two crowded performances of WAGNEE'S last work,
362. Parsifal. In the morning I went into the
i VISIT beautiful gardens of the Neue Schloss. On
WAGNER S
GRAVE, either side of a lake, upon which floated a
couple of swans and innumerable water-lilies, the long
park-like avenues of trees are vocal with wild doves, and
the robin is heard in the adjoining thickets. At my
approach the sweet song ceases abruptly, and the startled
bird flies out, scattering the pale petals of the wild roses
I VISIT WAGNER'S GRAVE. 463
upon my path. I follow a stream of people on foot, as
they move down the left-hand avenue in the garden of the
Neue Schloss, which adjoins WAGNER'S own grounds.
Some are going some are coming. Presently I see an
opening in the bushes on my left ; the path leads me to a
clump of evergreens. I follow it, and come suddenly on the
great composer's grave. All about the green square mound
the trees are thick laurel, fir, and yew. The shade falls
funereally across the immense grey granite slab; but over
the dark foliage the sky is bright blue, and straight in front
of me, above the low bushes, I can see the bow-windows
of the dead master's study where I spent with him one
delightful evening in 1876.
I can see, too, the jet of water that he loved playing high
above the hedge of evergreen. It lulls me with its sound.
" Vahnfried ! Vahnfried ! " it seems to murmur. It was
the word written above the master's house the word he
most loved; the word his tireless spirit most believed in
how shall I render it ? " Dream-life ! dream-life ! Earth's
illusion of joy ! "
Great spirit ! thy dream-life here is past, and face to face
with truth, "rapt from the fickle and the frail," for thee
the illusion has vanished! Mayst thou also know the
fulness of joy in the unbroken and serene activities of
the eternal Reality !
I visited the grave twice. There is nothing written on
the granite slab. There were never present less than twenty
4b4. WAGNER,
persons, and a constant stream of pilgrims kept coming and
going.
One gentle token of the master's pitiful and tender regard
for the faithful dumb animals he so loved lies but a few feet
off in the same garden, and not far from his own grave.
Upon a mossy bank, surrounded with evergreens, is a
small marble slab, with this inscription to his favourite
dog:
" Here lies in peace ' Vahnfried's ' faithful watcher and
friend the good and beautiful Mark " (der gute, schone
Mark) !
I returned, too, to WAGNER'S tomb, plucked a branch of
the fir tree that waved above it, and went back to my room
to prepare myself by reading and meditation for the great
religious drama which I was to witness at four o'clock in the
afternoon WAGNER'S latest and highest inspiration the
story of the sacred brotherhood, the knights of San Graal
Parsifal!
465
III
INTERLUDE
ON THE LAST CROWN.
WAGNER worked at Parsifal with incredible speed, but
with that extraordinary elaboration of detail which he him-
self declared taxed his brain to the utmost. He
363.
ELABORATE sometimes complained that he could employ no
BOOKING. L 1 ! J L 1 j.1
one to help him adequately in scoring the
parts. Nothing ever satisfied him unless he did it himself.
As he advanced the toil increased. He would say that even
the score of Lohengrin in which he had not yet sounded
all the resources of the orchestral art was light work in
comparison with such an effort as Parsifal. He laboured at
this with great love and tireless zeal. He often declared
that it would be his last work, although his busy brain, at
"Venice, was already revolving new fields of thought new
worlds to conquer.
80
4GG ON THE LAST CEOWN.
His friends noticed with anxiety that failing freshness and
vigour of body not of mind pathetic traces of which are
noticeable in that last very fine photograph
364.
LAST (profile) of which I give a woodcut, and which
H ' has been engraved in most of the memoirs since
published. The expression of the countenance is softened.
It is the face of a man who has done with fighting and
escaped defeat, but is left with a certain weariness of spirit.
Still, the last year of WAGNER'S life was full of halcyon
days; his sun went down in a sky of unclouded serenity.
He had won more than all he could have expected to win ;
for in the early days he had often said in despair, " I shall
never make my ideas understood " and he lived to see the
mighty conceptions of his genius realised.
His farewell banquet at Bayreuth after the Parsifal
festival in 1882 was a dignified and touching adieu to
365. friends, many of whom he was never to see
S ^ S E Z T H ^ Y again. Something has been said about a feeling
WAGNEK. O f rivalry between LISZT and WAGNER in the
last days. Nothing could be more false and unfounded.
"WAGNER a fait un autre miracle," said LISZT, when hs
attended the rehearsals of Parsifal in 1882, and WAGNER'S
affectionate speech in answer to the glowing language in
which LISZT proposed his health at the great banquet held
afterwards, showed very well how deep and indissoluble was
the nature of their friendship. When LISZT sat down
SPEECHES BY LISZT AND WAGNER. 467
amidst loud acclamations, WAGNER rose, and in the follow-
ing simple and unaffected words recalled all he owed to
LISZT :
" On this day, when the preparations for the performances
of my last work are completed ; when, thanks to this con-
course of eminent artists, I may look with pleasure and
pride on the achievement, I feel myself called upon to
speak, to all of you assembled here at my invitation, of the
influence that this exceptional and unique man has had on
my whole artistic career. At a time when as they say in
Germany I was a most distinctly repudiated ' Mossoo/
LISZT came forward LISZT, who had evolved from his
innermost consciousness a profound comprehension of my-
self and my work. He said to me, ' Thou man of Art, I
believe in thee/ and so he became the bridge that led me
from one world to another from the inner world, I mean,
into which I had unreservedly retired, into the outer world
on whose discerning judgment the creative artist has to
depend, and in which, at that time, every hand was against
me. He it is that sustained and uplifted me as no other
did. I call upon you to drink to the health of F. LISZT."
When WAGNER, in the autumn of 1882, left the cloudy
skies of Bayreuth for sunny Italy, he also left the scene of
his triumphs, which he was never to revisit alive. In the
spring of the following year, as I have related, his body
was brought back and laid in his garden at Bayreuth, and
in. the July following I went to Bayreuth to be present at
*
468 PAES1FAL.
the repetition of the Parsifal performances, every detail of
which WAGNER had superintended in the previous year. I
shall never see the like again the glow of the master's
spirit was still upon the actors, the musicians, and the
audience.
IV.
PARSIFAL.
THE blood of God ! mystic symbol of Divine life "for the
blood is the life thereof." That is the key-note of Parsifal,
the Knight of the Sangrail. Wine is the ready
THE MYSTIC symbolical vehicle the material link between
the divine and the human life. In the old reli-
gions, that heightened consciousness, that intensity of feeling
produced by stimulant, was thought to be the very entering
in of the " god " the union of the Divine and human
spirit ; and in the Eleusinian mysteries, the " sesame "
the bread of Demeter, the earth mother ; the " kykeon,"
or wine of Dionysos the vine god were thus sacra-
mental.
The passionate desire to approach and mingle with Deity
is the one mystic bond common to all religions in all
THE MYSTIC UNION. 4G9
lands. It is the " cry of the human " : it traverses
the ages, it exhausts many symbols and transcends all
forms.
To the Christian it is summed up in the "Lord's
Supper/'
The mediaeval legend of the Sangrail (real or royal blood)
is the most poetic and pathetic form of transubstantiation
in it the gross materialism of the Roman Mass almost ceases
to be repulsive; it possesses the true legendary power of
attraction and assimilation.
As the Knights of the Table Round, with their holy
vows, provided mediaeval Chivalry with a centre, so did the
Lord's table, with its Sangrail, provide Mediaeval Religion
with its central attractive point. And as all marvellous
tales of knightly heroism circled round King Arthur's
table, so did the great legends embodying the Christian
conceptions of sin, punishment, and redemption circle round
the Sangrail and the sacrifice of the " Mass/'
In the legends of Parsifal and Lohengrin, the knightly
and religious elements are welded together. This is
enough. We need approach Parsifal with no deep know-
ledge of the various Sagas made use of by WAGNER in
his drama. His disciples, whilst most eager to trace its
various elements to their sources, are most emphatic in
declaring that the Parsifal drama, so intimately true to
the spirit of Roman Catholicism, is nevertheless a new
creation.
470 PARSIFAL.
JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA received in a crystal cup the blood
of CHRIST as it flowed from the spear-wound made by the
Roman soldier. The cup and the spear were
367< committed to Titurel, who became a holy knight
MONTSALVAT.
and head of a sacred brotherhood of knights.
They dwelt in the Vizigoth Mountains of Southern Spain,
where, amidst impenetrable forests, rose the legendary
palace of Montsalvat. Here they guarded the sacred relics,
issuing forth at times from their palatial fortress, like
Lohengrin, to fight for innocence and right, and always
returning to renew their youth and strength by the celestial
contemplation of the Sangrail, and by occasional participa-
tion in the holy feast.
Time and history count for very little in these narratives.
It was allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown
extremely aged, but as it was not allowed that
SfSfl
he could die in the presence of the Sangrail, he
TITUHEL.
seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance,
res-ting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail ;
and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be
heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortis, his
son, reigned in his stead.
Montsalvat, with its pure, contemplative, but active
"brotherhood, and its mystic cup, thus stands out as the
poetic symbol of all that is highest and best in mediaeval
Christianity.
KLINGSOR. THE FALL OF AMFORTIS. 471
The note of the wicked world Magic for Devotion
Sensuality for Worship breaks in upon our vision, as the
scene changes from the halls of Montsalvat to
O/Q
Klingsor's palace. Klingsor, an impure knight,
K LINGS OK.
who has been refused admittance to the order of
the " Sangrail," enters into a compact with the powers of
evil by magic acquires arts of diabolical fascination fills
his palace and gardens with enchantments, and wages bitter
war against the holy knights, with a view of corrupting
them, and ultimately, it may be, of acquiring for himself
the " Sangrail," in which all power is believed to reside.
Many knights have already succumbed to the " insidious
arts " of Klingsor ; but the tragical turning point of the
Parsifal is that Amfortis, himself the son of Titurel,
the official guardian of the Grail, in making war upon the
magician, took with him the sacred spear, and lost it to
Klingsor.
It came about in this way. A woman of unearthly
loveliness won him in the enchanted bowers, adjoining the
evil knight's palace, and Klingsor, seizing the
o70.
THE FALL OF holy spear, thrust it into Amfortis' side, in-
flicting therewith an incurable wound. The
brave knight, Gurnemanz, dragged his master fainting from
the garden, h^s companions of the Sangrail covering their
retreat. But returned to Montsalvat, the unhappy king
awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of the sacred spear,
472 PARSIFAL.
and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an incurable wound.
But who is Parsifal ?
The smell of pine-woods in July ! The long avenue
outside the city of Bayreuth, that leads straight up the
hill, crowned by the Wanner Theatre, a noble
371.
i ENTER THE structure architecturally admirable severe,
THEATRE. 1 L ,1 1 . J . .
simple, but exactly adapted to its purpose ....
I join the stream of pilgrims, some in carriages, others on
foot. As we approach, a clear blast of trombones and brass
from the terrace in front of the grand entrance, plays out
the Grail " motive/' It is the well-known signal there is
no time to be lost. I enter at the prescribed door, and find
myself close to my appointed place. Everyone such is
the admirable arrangement seems to do likewise. In a
few minutes about one thousand persons are seated without
confusion. The theatre is darkened, the foot-lights are
lowered, the prelude begins.
ACT I.
The waves of sound rise from the shadowy gulph sunken
between the audience and the foot-lights. Upon the sound
ocean of "wind" the "Take eat" or " Love-
372.
ORCHESTRAL feast " motive floats. Presently the strings
pierce through it, the Spear motive follows, and
then, full of heavy pain, " Drink ye all of this/' followed
SUNRISE. 473
by tlie famous Grail motive an old chorale also used by
MENDELSSOHN in the Reformation Symphony. Then comes
the noble Faith and Love theme.
As I sit in the low light, amidst the silent throng, and
listen, I need no interpreter, I am being placed in possession
of the emotional key-notes of the drama. Every subject is
first distinctly enunciated, and then all are wondrously
blended together. There is the pain of Sacrifice the mental
agony, the bodily torture there are the alternate pauses
of Sorrow and respite from sorrow long drawn out, the
sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed Joy, the strain
of upward Endeavour, the serene peace of Faith and Love,
crowned by the blessed Vision of the Grail. 'Tis past. The
prelude melts into the opening recitative.
The eyes have now to play their part. The curtain rises,
the story begins. The morning breaks slowly, the grey
streaks redden, a lovely summer landscape lies
373> bathed in primrose light. Under the shadow of
SUNRISE.
a noble tree, the aged knight, Gurnemanz, has
been resting with two young attendants. From the neigh-
bouring halls of Montsalvat the solemn reveille the Grail
motive rings out, and all throe sink on their knees in
prayer. The sun bursts forth in splendour, as the hymn
rises to mingle with the voices of universal nature. The
waves of sound well up and fill the soul with unspeakable
thankfulness and praise.
474 PARSIFAL.
The talk is of Amfortis, the king, and of his incurable
wound. A wild gallop, a rush of sound, and a weird
woman, with streaming hair, springs towards
8 '*' the startled group. She bears a phial, with
RUNDRY
rare balsam from the Arabian shores. It is
for the king's wound. Who is the wild horsewoman?
Kundry strange creation a being doomed to wander
like the Wandering Jew, the wild Huntsman, or Flying
Dutchman always seeking a deliverance she cannot find
Kimdry, who, in ages gone by, met the Saviour on the road
to Calvary, and derided him. Some said she was Herodias'
daughter. Now filled with remorse, yet weighted with
sinful longings, she serves by turns the Knights of the
Grail, then fulls under the spell of Klingsor, the evil
knight sorcerer, and in the guise of an enchantress, is
compelled by him to seduce, if possible, the Knights of the
Grail.
Eternal symbol of the divided allegiance of a woman's
soul ! She it was who, under the sensual spell, as an incar-
nation of loveliness, overcame Amfortis, and she it is now
who, in her ardent quest for salvation changed and squalid
in appearance serves the Knights of the Grail, and seeks
to heal Amfortis' wound !
No sooner has she delivered her balsam to the faithful
Gurnemnnz, and thrown herself exhausted upon the grass
where she lies gnawing her hair morosely than a change
in the sound atmosphere, which never ceases to be generated
AMFORTIS APPROACHES. 475
in the mystic orchestral gulph, presages the approach of
Amfortis.
He comes, borne on a litter, to his morning bath in the
shining lake hard by. Sharp is the pain of the wound
weary and hopeless is the king. Through the
875.
AWOETIS Wound-motive comes the sweet woodland music
and the breath of the blessed morning, frag-
rant with flowers and fresh with dew. It is one of
those incomparable bursts of woodland notes, full of
bird-song and the happy hum of insect life and rustling
of netted branches and waving of long tassclled grass.
I know of nothing like it save the forest music in Sieg-
fried.
The sick king listens, and remembers words of hope and
comfort that fell from a heavenly voice what time the
glory of the Grail passed
" Dorcli mitleid \Visscnd u Wait for my chosen one,
Der reine Thor,
Guileless and innocent,
Harre sem
Den ich erkor." Pity-enlightened."
They hand him the phial of balsam ; and presently, whilst
the lovely forest music again breaks forth, the king is
carried on to his bath, and Kundry, Gurnemanz, and the
two esquires hold the stage.
As the old knight, who is a complete repertory of facts
476 PARSIFAL.
connected with the Grail tradition, unfolds to the esquires
the nature of the king's wound, the sorceries of
GDRNEMANZ'S Klingsor, the hope of deliverance from some
unknown " guileless one/' a sudden cry breaks
up the situation.
A white swan, pierced by an arrow, flutters dying to
the ground. It is the swan beloved of the Grail brother-
hood, bird of fair omen, symbol of spotless purity. The
slayer is brought in between two knights a stalwart youth,
fearless, unabashed whilst the death-music of the swan,
the slow distilling and stiffening of its life-blood, is
marvellously rendered by the orchestra. Conviction of
his fault comes over the youth as he listens to the re-
proaches of Gurnemanz. He hangs his head, ashamed and
penitent, and at last with a sudden passion of remorse
snaps his bow, and flings it aside. The swan is borne
off, and Parsifal (the " guileless one," for he it is), with
Gurnemanz and Kundry who rouses herself and surveys
Parsifal with strange, almost savage curiosity hold the
stage.
In this scene Kundry tells the youth more than he cares
to hear about himself. How his father, Gamuret, was a
great knight killed in battle; how his mother,
KUNDRY'S Herzeleide (Heart's Affliction), fearing a like fate
for her son, brought him up in the lonely forest ;
how he left her to follow a troop of knights that he met one
KUNDRY' S SLEEP. 477
day winding through the forest glade, and being led on and
on in pursuit of them, never overtook them and never
returned to his mother, Heart's Affliction, who died of grief.
At this point the frantic youth seizes Kundry by the throat
in an agony of rage and grief, but is held back by Gurne-
manz, till, worn out by the violence of his emotion, he
faints away, and is gradually revived by Kundry and
Gurnemanz.
Suddenly Kundry rises with a wild look, like one under
a spell. Her mood of service is over. She staggers across
the stage she can hardly keep awake. " Sleep/'
o7o
KUNDRY'S she mutters, " I must sleep sleep ! " and falls
down in one of those long trances which appa-
rently lasted for months, or years, and formed the tran-
sition periods between her mood of Grail service and the
Klingsor slavery into which she must next relapse in spite
of herself.
And is this the guileless one ? This "wild youth who slays
the fair swan who knows not his own name nor whence
he comes, nor whither he goes, nor what are his
379.
PASSAGE TO destinies ? The old knight eyes him curiously
MONTSALVAT.
._ he
seen the king pass once he had marked his pain. Was
he " enlightened by pity ? '' Is he the appointed deliverer ?
The old knight now invites him to the shrine of the Grail.
473 PARSIFAL.
"What is the Grail?" asks the youth. Truly a guileless,
innocent one ! yet a brave and pure knight, since he has
known no evil, and so readily repents of a fault committed
in ignorance.
Gurnemanz is strangely drawn to him. He shall see the
Grail, and in the Holy Palace, what time the mystic light
streams forth and the assembled knights bow themselves in
prayer, the voice which comforted Amfortis shall speak to
his deliverer and bid him arise and heal the king.
Gurnemanz and Parsifal have ceased to speak. They
stand in the glowing light of the summer-land. The tide
of music rolls on continuously, but sounds more strange
and dreamy.
Is it a cloud passing over the sky? There seems to be a
shuddering in the branches the light fades upon yonder
sunny woodlands the foreground darkens apace. The
whole scene is moving, but so slowly that it seems to change
like a dissolving view. I see the two figures of Gurnemanz
and Parsifal moving through the trees they are lost behind
yonder rock. They emerge further off higher up. The
air grows very dim ; the orchestra peals louder and louder.
I lose the two in the deepening twilight. The forest is
changing, the land is wild and mountainous. Huge galleries
and arcades, rock-hewn, loom through the dim forest ;
but all is growing dark. I listen to the murmurs of the
THE HALL OF THE KNIGHTS. 479
" Grail/' the " Spear/' the " Pain," the " Love and Faith "
motives hollow murmurs, confused, floating out of the
depths of lonely caves. Then I have a feeling of void and
darkness, and there comes a sighing as of a soul swoon-
ing away in a trance, and a vision of waste places and
wild caverns ; and then through the confused dream I hear
the solemn boom of mighty bells, only muffled. They keep
time as to some ghostly march. I strain my eyes into the
thick gloom before me. Is it a rock, or forest, or palace ?
As the light returns slowly, a hall of more than
Alhambra-like splendour opens before me. My eyes are
riveted on the shining pillars of variegated
THE HALL OF marble, the tesselated pavements, the vaulted
' roof glowing with gold and colour ; beyond,
arcades of agate columns, bathed in a misty moonlight air,
and lost in a bewildering perspective of halls and corridors.
I hear the falling of distant water in marble fonts ; the
large bells of Montsalvat peal louder and louder, and to
music of unimaginable stateliness the knights enter in
solemn procession, clad in the blue and red robes of the
Grail, and take their seats at two semicircular tables which
start like arms to the right and left of the holy shrine.
Beneath it lies Titurel entranced, and upon it is presently
deposited the sacred treasure of the Grail itself.
As the wounded King Amfortis is borne in, the assembled
480 PARSIFAL.
knights, each standing in his place, a golden cup before
him. intone the Grail motive, which is taken
381.
THE HOLT up by the entering choruses of servitors and
esquires bearing the holy relics.
Gurnemanz is seated amongst the knights ; Parsifal stands
aside and looks on in mute astonishment, " a guileless one."
As the Holy Grail is set down on the altar before the
wounded king, a burst of heavenly music streams from the
high dome voices of angels intone the celestial phrases,
" Take, eat '' and f ' this is my blood ! " and blend them with
the " faith and love '' motives. As the choruses die away,
the voice of the entranced Titurel is heard from beneath the
altar calling upon Amfortis, his son, to uncover the Grail
that he may find refreshment and life in the blessed
vision.
Then follows a terrible struggle in the breast of Am-
fortis. He, sore stricken in sin, yet guardian of the Grail,
guilty among the guiltless, oppressed with pain, bowed down
with shame, craving for restoration, overwhelmed with un-
worthiness, yet chosen to stand and minister before the
Lord on behalf of His saints ! Pathetic situation, which
must in all times repeat itself in the history of the Church.
The unworthiness of the minister affects not the validity of
his consecrated acts. Yet what agony of mind must many
a priest have suffered, himself oppressed with sin and doubt,
whilst dispensing the means of grace, and acting as a
minister and steward of the mysteries.
THIS IS MY BLOOD. 431
The marvellous piece of self-analysis in which the
conscience-stricken king bewails his lot, as little admits
of description here as the music which embodies his
emotions.
At the close of it angel voices seem floating in mid- air,
Sighing the mystic words :
" Durch mitleid Wissend " Wait for my chosen one,
Der reine Thor,
. . Guileless and innocent,
Harre sem,
Den ich erkor." Pity-enlightened."
And immediately afterwards the voice of Titurel, like one
turning restlessly in his sleep, comes up from his living
tomb beneath the altar, " Uncover the Grail ! "
With trembling hands the sick king raises himself, and
with a great effort staggers towards the shrine the cover-
ing is removed he takes the crystal cup he
382.
THIS is MY raises it on high the blood is dark the light
begins to fade in the hall a mist and dimness
come over the scene we seem to be assisting at a shadowy
ceremony in a dream the big bells are tolling the
heavenly choirs from above the dome, which is now bathed
in twilight, are heard: "Drink ye, all of this." Amfortis
raises on high the crystal vase the knights fall on their
knees in prayer. Suddenly a faint tremor of light quivers
in the crystal cup then the blood grows ruby red for a
moment. Amfortis waves it to and fro the knights gaze
31
482 PARSIFAL.
in ecstatic adoration. Titurel's voice gathers strength in
his tomb :
" Celestial rapture I
How streams the light upon the face of God ! "
The light fades slowly out of the crystal cup the miracle is
accomplished. The blood again grows dark the light of
common day returns to the halls of Montsalvat, and the
knights resume their seats, to find each one his golden
goblet filled with wine.
During the sacred repast which follows the brotherhood
join hands and embrace, singing :
" Blessed are they that believe ;
Blessed are they that love ! "
and the refrain is heard again far up in the heights, re-
echoed by the angelic hosts.
I looked round upon the silent audience whilst these
astonishing scenes were passing before me; the whole
383 assembly was motionless all seemed to be
THE SPIRITUAL solemnised by the august spectacle seemed
IMPRESSION
MADE. almost to share in the devout contemplation
and trance-like worship of the holy knights. Every thought
of the stage had vanished nothing was further from my
own thoughts than play-acting. I was sitting as I should
sit at an oratorio, in devout and rapt contemplation. Before
my eyes had passed a symbolic vision of prayer and ecstasy,
THE MEANING OF THE GUILELESS FOOL. 483
flooding the soul with overpowering thoughts of the Divine
sacrifice and the mystery of unfathomable love.
The hall of Montsalvat empties. Gurnemanz strides
excitedly up to Parsifal, who stands stupefied with what he
has seen
" Why standest thou silent ?
Knowest thou what thine eyes have seen ? "
The guileless one shakes his head. " Nothing but a fool ! "
exclaims Gurnemanz, angrily ; and seizing Parsifal by the
shoulder, he pushes him roughly out of the hall, with :
" Be off ! look after thy geese,
And henceforth leave our swans in peace."
The Grail vision had, then, taught the "guileless one"
nothing. He could not see his mission he was as yet un-
awakened to the deeper life of the spirit ; though
384.
THE MEANING blameless and unsullied, he was still the "natural
GUILELESS man." Profound truth ! that was not first which
was spiritual, but that which was natural : before
Parsifal wins a spiritual triumph, he must be spiritually
tried ; his inner life must be deepened and developed, else
he can never read aright the message of the Grail.
The life of God in the spirit comes only when the battle
for God in the heart has been fought and won.
Fare forth, thou guileless one ! thou shalt yet add to the
simplicity of the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Thou art
31 *
484 PARSIFAL.
innocent because ignorant ; but thou shalt be weighed anon
in the balance and not be found wanting : and then shalt
thou re-conquer the holy spear lost in Sin, re-won in Purity
and Sacrifice, and be to the frail Amfortis the chosen saviour
for whom he waits.
The foregoing events occupied about an hour and a
quarter. When the curtain fell, the vast audience broke up
in silence.
The air -outside was cool and balmy. In the distance lay
the city of Bayreuth, with the tower of the Alte Schloss and
the old church standing up grey against the distant Bavarian
hills.
All around us lay the pine woods, broken by the lawns
and avenues that encircle the theatre and embower it in a
secluded world of its own even as the Palace of the Grail
was shut off from the profane world.
Here, indeed, is truly the Montsalvat of the modern
drama a spot purified and sacred to the highest aims and
noblest manifestations of Art.
In about an hour the Spear motive was the signal blown
on the wind instruments outside, and I took my seat for the
second act.
ACT II.
A restless, passion-tossed prelude. The " Grail " subject
distorted, the " Spear " motive thrust in discordant, the
KLINGSOR PRELUDE. 485
"Faith and love" theme fluttering like a wounded dove in
pain, fierce bursts of passion, wild shocks of un-
38o
KLINGSOR controlled misery, mingling with the "carnal
PRELUDE. . T , . . , ,
joy music of Khngsor s magic garden and the
shuddering might of his alchemy.
The great magician, Klingsor, is seen alone in his dun-
geon palace harsh contrast to the gorgeous halls of Mont-
salvat. Here all is built of the live rock, an impenetrable
fastness, the home of devilish might and terrible spells.
Klingsor is aware of the coming struggle, and he means
to be ready for it. He owns the sacred spear wrested from
Amfortis ; he even aspires to win the Grail ; he
ooi).
APPARITION knows the "guileless one" is on his way to
OFKUNURY. . .
wrest that spear trom mm. His only hope is in
paralysing the fool by his enchantments as he paralysed
Amfortis, and the same woman will serve his turn.
"Kundry!" The time is come, the spells are woven
blue vapours rise, and in the midst of the blue vapours, the
figure of the still sleeping Kundry is seen. She wakes,
trembling violently ; she knows she is again under the spell
she abhors the spell to do evil, the mission to corrupt.
With a shuddering scream she stands before her tormentor,
denying his power, loathing to return to her vile mission,
yet returning, as with a bitter cry she vanishes from his
presence.
Parsifal has invaded Klingsor's realm; the evil knights
486 PARSIFAL.
have fled before his prowess, wounded and in disorder.
Ktmdry is commissioned to meet the guileless youth in the
enchanted garden and, all other allurements failing, to
subdue him by her irresistible fascinations and hand him
over to Klingsor.
In a moment the scenery lifts, and a garden of marvellous
beauty and extent lies before us. The flowers are all of
colossal dimensions huge roses hang in tangled
GARDEN OP festoons, the cactus, the lily, the blue-bell, creepers
and orchids of enormous size and dazzling colour
wave in mid-air, and climb the aromatic trees.
On a bright hill appears Parsifal, standing bewildered by
the light and loveliness around him. Beautiful girls, dressed
like flowers, and hardly distinguishable from them at first,
rush in, bewailing their wounded and disabled knights ; but
on seeing Parsifal, fall upon their new prey, and surround-
ing him, sing verse after verse of the loveliest ballet music,
whilst trying to embrace him, and quarrelling with each
other for the privilege.
About that wonderful chorus of flower-girls there was
just a suggestive touch of the Rhine maidens' singing. It
belonged to the same school of thought and feeling, but
was freer, wilder more considerable, and altogether more
complex and wonderful in its changes and in the marvellous
confusion in which it breaks up.
The guileless one resists these charmers, and they are
THE NEW LOVE DUET. AN ANALYSIS. 487
just about to leave him in disgust, when the roses lift on
one side, and, stretched on a mossy bank overhung with
flowers, appears a woman of unearthly loveliness. It is
Kundry transformed, and in the marvellous duet which
follows between her and Parsifal, a perfectly new and
original type of love duet is struck out an analysis of
character, unique in musical drama a combination of
sentiment and a situation absolutely novel, which could
only have been conceived and carried out by a creative
genius of the highest order.
First, I note that the once spell-bound Kundry is
devoted utterly to her task of winning Parsifal, into this
388. she throws all the intensity of her wild and
THE NEW desperate nature, but in turn she is strangely
LOVE DUET. &
AN ANALYSIS, affected by the spiritual atmosphere of the
"guileless one" a feeling comes over her in the midst
of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to
be her saviour too ; yet, woman- like, she conceives of her
salvation as possible only in union with him. Yet was this
the very crime to which Klingsor would drive her for the
ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought, feeling,
aspiration, longing ! struggle of irreconcilable elements !
How shall she reconcile them ? Her intuition fails her not,
and her tact triumphs. She will win by stealing his love
through his mother's love. A mother's love is holy that
love she tells him of it can never more be his but she
488 PARSIFAL.
will replace it her passion shall be sanctified by it
through that passion she has sinned, through it she, too,
shall be redeemed. She will work out her own salvation
by the very spells that are upon her for evil. He is pure
he shall make her pure, could she but win him both, by
the might of such pure love, would surely be delivered
from Klingsor the corrupter, the tormentor. Fatuous
dream ! How, through corruption win incorruption ? How,
through indulgence, win peace and freedom from desire ?
It is the old cheat of the senses Satan appears as an angel
of light. The thought deludes the unhappy Kundry her-
self she is no longer consciously working for Klingsor,
she really believes that this new turn, this bias given to
passion, will purify both her and the guileless, pure fool
she seeks to subdue.
Nothing can describe the snblety of their long inter-
view ; the surprising turns of sentiment and contrasts of
feeling. Throughout this scene Parsifal's instinct is abso-
lutely true and sure. Everything Kundry says about his
mother, Herzeleide, he feels; but every attempt to make
him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declama-
tion is splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and
piteous prayer for salvation, her belief that before her is
her saviour could she but win him to her will, the choking
fury of baffled passion, the steady and subtle encroachments
made whilst Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream, the
burning kiss which recalls him to himself, the fine touch
KUNDRY BAFFLED. 489
by which this kiss, whilst arousing in him the stormiest
feelings, causes a sharp pain, as of Amfortis' own wound,
piercing his very heart. All this is realistic if you will,
but it is realism raised to the sublime.
Suddenly Parsifal springs up, hurls the enchantress
from him, will forth from Klingsor's realm. She is baffled,
she knows it ; for a moment she bars his passage,
KUNURY then succumbs ; the might of sensuality which
lost Amfortis the sacred spear, has been met and
defeated by the guileless fool. He has passed from inno-
cence to knowledge in his interview with the flower-girt
girls, in his long converse with Kundry, in her insidious
embrace, in her kiss ; but, all these are now thrust aside,
he steps forth still unconquered, still "guileless," but no
more "a fool." The knowledge of good and evil has come,
but the struggle is already passed.
"Yes, sinner, I do offer thee Redemption," he can say
to Kundry ; " not in thy way, but in thy Lord Christ's
way of sacrifice ! '
But the desperate creature, wild with passion, will listen
to no reason ; she shouts aloud to her master, and Klingsor
suddenly appears, poising the sacred spear. In another
moment he hurls it right across the enchanted garden at
Parsifal. It cannot wound the guileless and pure one as it
wounded the sinful Amfortis. A miracle ! It hangs arrested
in the air above Parsifal's head; he seizes it it is the
490 PARSIFAL.
sacred talisman, one touch of which will heal even as it
inflicted the king's deadly wound.
With a mighty cry and the shock as of an earthquake,
the castle of Klingsor falls shattered to pieces, the garden
withers up to a desert, the girls, who have rushed in, lie
about amongst the fading flowers, themselves withered up
and dead. Kundry sinks down in a deathly swoon, whilst
Parsifal steps over a ruined wall and disappears, saluting
her with the words : " Thou alone knowest when we shall
meet again! "
The long shadows were stealing over the hills when I
came out at the second pause. Those whom I met and
conversed with were subdued and awed. What a
SOLEMN solemn tragedy of human passion we had been
assisting at ! Not a heart there but could inter-
pret that struggle between the flesh and the spirit from its
own experiences. Not one but knew the desperately wicked
and deceitful temptations that come like enchantresses in
the wizard's garden, to plead the cause of the devil in the
language of high-flown sentiment or even religious feeling.
Praise and criticism seemed dumb ; we rather walked and
spoke of what we had just witnessed like men convinced of
judgment, and righteousness, and sin. It was a strange
mood in which to come out of a theatre after witnessing
O
what would commonly be called an " Opera."
I felt more than ever the impossibility of producing the
PRELUDE OF THE YEARS. 491
Parsifal in London, at Drury Lane or Covent Garden,
before a well-dressed company of loungers, who had well
dined, and were on their way to balls and suppers afterwards.
I would as soon see the Oberammergau play at a music
hall.
No ; in Parsifal all is solemn, or all is irreverent.
At Bayreuth we came on a pilgrimage ; it cost us time,
and trouble, and money ; we were in earnest so were the
actors ; the spirit of the great master who had planned every
detail seemed still to preside over all ; the actors lived in
their parts ; not a thought of self remained ; no one
accepted applause or recall ; no one aimed at producing a
personal effect; the actors were lost in the drama, and it
was the drama and not the actors which had impressed and
solemnised us. When I came out they asked who was
Amfortis? I did not know. I said "the wounded king."
As the instruments played out the Faith and Love motive
for us to re-enter, the mellow sunshine broke once more
from the cloud-rack over city, and field, and forest, before
sinking behind the long low range of the distant hills.
ACT III.
The opening prelude to the third and last act seems to
warn me of the lapse of time. The music is full
PRELUDE OF of pain and restlessness the pain of wretched
THE TEAKS. , . . ., , ,. .
years ot long waiting tor a deliverer, who comes
pot ; the restlessness and misery of a hope deferred, the
432 PARSIFAL.
weariness of a life without a single joy. The motives, dis-
coloured as it were by grief, work up to a distorted version
of the Grail subject, which breaks off as with a cry of
despair.
Is the Grail, too, then turned into a mocking spirit to
the unhappy Amfortis ?
Relief comes to us with the lovely scene upon which the
curtain rises. Again the wide summer land lies stretching
away over sunlit moor and woodland. In the
M?Zt
THE SUMMER foreground wave the forest trees, and I hear
the ripple of the woodland streams. Invariably
throughout the drama, in the midst of all human pain and
passion, great nature is there, peaceful, harmonious in all
her loveliest moods ; a paradise in which dwell souls who
make of her their own purgatory.
In yonder aged figure, clad in the Grail pilgrim robe,
I discern Gurnemanz ; his hair is white ; he stoops with
years ; a rude hut is hard by. Presently a groan
0*70.
WAKING OF arrests his attention, moaning as of a human
thing in distress. He clears away some brush-
wood, and beneath it finds, waking from her long trance,
the strange figure of Kundry. For how many years has
she slept, we know not. Why is she now recalled to life ?
She staggers to her feet ; we see that she too is in a pilgrim
garb, with a rope girding her dress of coarse brown serge.
THE BLACK KNIGHT. 493
" Service ! service ! " she mutters, and seizing a pitcher,
moves mechanically to fill it at the well, then totters but
half awake into the wooden hut. The forest music breaks
forth the hum of happy insect life, the song of wild birds.
All seems to pass as in a vision; when suddenly enters a
knight clad in black armour from top to toe.
The two eye him curiously, and Gurnemanz, approaching,
bids him lay aside his armour and his weapons. He carries
a long spear. In silence the knight unhelms,
oJ4
THE BLACK and sticking the spear into the ground, kneels
before it, and remains lost in devotional con-
templation. The " Spear " and " Grail " motives mingle
together in the full tide of orchestral sounds carrying on
the emotional undercurrent of the drama. The knight is
soon recognised by both as the long-lost and discarded
Parsifal.
The " guileless one " has learned wisdom, and discovered
his mission he knows now that he bears the spear which
is to heal the king's grievous wound, and that he himself is
appointed his successor. Through long strife and trial and
pain he seems to have grown into something of Christ's own
likeness. Not all at once, but at last he has found the
path. He returns to bear salvation and pardon both to
Kundry arid the wretched king, Amfortis.
The full music flows on whilst Gurnemanz relates how
the knights have all grown weak and aged, deprived of the
494 PARSIFAL.
vision and sustenance of the Holy Grail, whilst the long-
entranced Titurel is at last dead.
At this news Parsifal, overcome with grief, swoons away,
and Gurnemanz and Kundry loosen his armour, and sprinkle
him with water from the holy spring. Underneath his
black suit of mail he appears clad in a long white tunic.
The grouping is here admirable; Gurnemauz is in the
Templar's red and blue robe ; Parsifal in white, his auburn
hair parted in front, and flowing down in ringlets
oyo.
A SACRED on either side, recalls Leonardo's favourite con-
ception of the Saviour's head, and, indeed, from
this point Parsifal becomes a kind of symbolic reflection of
the Lord Himself. Kundry, subdued and awed, lies weeping
at his feet ; he lifts his hands to bless her with infinite pity.
She washes his feet, and dries them with the hairs of her
head. It is a bold stroke, but the voices of nature, the
murmur of the summer woods, come with an infinite healing
tenderness and pity, and the act is seen to be symbolical of
the pure devotion of a sinful creature redeemed from sin.
Peace has at last entered into that wild and troubled heart,
and restless Kundry, delivered from Klingsor's spell, receives
the sprinkling of baptismal water at the hands of Parsifal.
The great spaces of silence in the dialogue, broken now
by a few sentences from Parsifal, now from Gurnemanz, are
more eloquent than many words. The tidal music flows
THE KISS OF PEACE. 495
on in a ceaseless stream of changing harmonies, returning
constantly to the sweet and slumbrous sound of the summer
land, full of teeming life and glowing happiness.
Then Gurnemanz takes up his parable. It is the Blessed
Good Friday on which our dear Lord suffered. The Love and
Faith phrases are chimed forth, the pain-notes of the Cross
agony are sounded and pass, the Grail motive seems to
swoon away in descending harmonies, sinking into the
woodland voices of universal nature that trespass-pardoned
nature that now seems waking to the day of her glory and
innocence.
In that solemn moment Parsifal bsnds over the subdued
and humbled Kundry, and kisses her softly on the brow
her wild kiss in the garden had kindled in him
oJo.
THE KISS OF fierce fire, mingled with the bitter wound-pain ;
his is the seal of her eternal pardon and peace.
In the distance the great bells of Montsalvat are now
heard booming solemnly the air darkens, the light fades
out, the slow motion of all the scenery recommences. Again
I hear the wild cave music, strange and hollow sounding
the three move on as in a dream, and are soon lost in the
deep shadows ; and through all, louder and louder, boom
the heavy bells of Montsalvat, until the stage brightens,
and we find ourselves once more in the vast Alhambra-like
hall of the knights.
For thte last time Amfortis is borne in, and the brother-
496 PARSIFAL.
hood of the Grail form the procession bearing the sacred
relics, which are deposited before him. .
The king, in great agony and despair, bewails the death
of his father and his own backsliding. With failing but
desperate energy he harangues the assembled
Ot)(
AMFOKTIS is knights, and, tottering forward, beseeches them
to free him from his misery and sin-stained life,
and thrust their swords deep into his wounded side. At this
moment Gurnemanz, accompanied by Parsifal and Kundry,
enter. Parsifal steps forward with the sacred spear, now at
length to be restored to the knights. He touches the side of
Amfortis, the wound is healed, and as he raises the spear on
high the point is seen, glowing with the crimson glory of
the Grail. Then stepping up to the shrine, Parsifal takes
the crystal cup, the dark blood glows bright crimson as he
holds it on high, and at that moment, whilst all fall on
their knees, and celestial music (" Drink ye all of this ")
floats in the upper air, Kundry falls back dying, her eyes
fixed on the blessed Grail. A white dove descends and
hovers for a moment, poised in mid-air above the glowing
cup. A soft chorus of angels seems to die away in the
clouds beyond the golden dome
" Marvellous mercy !
Victorious Saviour 1 "
A TOUCHING INCIDENT. 497
Words can add nothing to the completeness of the drama,
and no words can give any idea of the splendour and com-
plexity of that sound ocean upon which the drama floats
from beginning to end.
The enemies of the Grail are destroyed or subdued, the
wound they have inflicted is healed, the prey they claimed
is rescued ; the pure and blameless Parsifal becomes the
consecrated head of the holy brotherhood, and the beatific
vision of God's eternal love and Real Presence is restored to
the Knights of the Sangrail.
i
When I came out of the theatre at the end of the
third and last act, it was ten o'clock.
The wind was stirring in the fir trees, the stars gleamed
out fitfully through a sky, across which the clouds were
hurrying wildly, but the moon rose low and large beyond
the shadowy hills, and bathed the misty valleys with a
mild and golden radiance as of some celestial dawn.
When the curtain fell on the last performance of Par-
sifal, at Bayreuth, which, on the 30th July 1883, brought
the celebration month to a close, the enthusiasm
398.
A TOUCHING of the audience found full vent in applause.
The curtain was once lifted, but no calls would
induce the performers to appear a second time or receive
any individual homage. This is entirely in accordance with
the tone of these exceptional representations. On each
32
498 PARSIFAL.
occasion the only applause permitted was at the end of the
drama, and throughout not a single actor answered to a
call or received any personal tribute.
Behind the scenes there occurred a touching incident.
The Banker GROSS led WAGNER'S children up to the
assembled actors, and in the name of their dead father
thanked the assembly for the care and labour of love ex-
pended by each and all in producing the last work of the
great dead master. SIEGFRIED, WAGNER'S son, thirteen
years old, then, in a few simple words, stifled with sobs,
thanked the actors personally, and all the children shook
hands with them. The KING OF BAVARIA charged himself
upon \VAGN ER'S death with the education of his son.
PAST AND PRESENT. 499
V.
INTERLUDE
ON BAYREUTH CITY.
(A Leaf from my Diary.)
WAGNER has invested Bayreuth with so modern an
interest that we are apt to forget that it has had a past ;
but once walk through it, and the old Markgrave
399.
IABT AND days of the great prince-nobles who owned the
town and country round, handing over both to
their heirs, come back to us ; and here and there a stone
relic reminds us of a different sort of world from ours a
world of Hohenzollern and Hohenstaufen, and wars and
fightings; aye, and of plague, pestilence, and famine too.
That grim warrior prince, armed cap-k-pie, who prances
yonder on his stone horse, with an inconvenient quantity of
harness on, in front of the New Palace; those vigorous
figures riding ancient stone steeds, now half-shattered, at
each corner of the fountain why cannot we make such
32 *
500 INTERLUDE ON BAYBEUTH CITY
statues now ? Because we don't love hard-fighting hand
to hand. "We are not always at it thinking about it. We
shoot the foe two miles off, and carry on war by telegraph.
We do not look up to our great nobles or our royal folk
because they lead us to battle and fortify the ramparts of
our towns; but because they take the chair at public dinners,
open hospitals, and encourage music, painting, and the arts
of peace. Well, I am content ; but there was grit in the
old days, for all that.
The annals of Bayreuth go back beyond the eleventh
century, and it has had a chequered, though at times
glorious career. In 1228, on the death of the
^ last DUKE OTTO II., it was held by PRINCE
THE PLAGUE.
FREDERICK, together with Nuremberg ; and
under his successors, who lived here half the year, it
reached its golden period. All this must be taken on
trust, for of that early period there is nothing left but
a few crumbling stones. Fire and plague have dealt
very terribly with Bayreuth. In 1430 most of the place
built chiefly of wood was burnt down. Rebuilt in 1472,
it had attained in 1580 to a population of only 1,907; but
its increase, in spite of the great sack and slaughter in the
days of WALLENSTEIN, was so rapid that in 1634 the plague
was able to carry off 2,000 persons, and still leave a goodly
population. Since then the plague has ravaged the town
no less than five times ; 144 houses were burnt down in
MODERN BAYREUTH. 501
1634, aud almost the whole town was in flames as late as
1621.
The present Bayreuth dates chiefly from 1655. It is to
the Brandenburg Princes who lived here that we owe those
palaces and goodly houses, carved stone relics,
MODERN fountains, and decayed splendours that arrest
the eye as you stroll through the Friedrich,
Maximilian, or Ludwig streets. The Opera House was
built by PRINCE FREDERICK, the husband of the gifted
sister of FREDERICK. THE GREAT, SOPHIA WILHELMINE,
and that lady's ideas of taste and magnificence have
been fully carried out. The place is a Renaissance gem.
The carved wooden balustrades of the staircase, the gor-
geous fittings of the old-fashioned boxes, as they rise in
three tiers, the heavy gilding and excessive ornamentation
of wreath and canopy over the Royal box, produce a
sumptuously impressive effect, and tell of that sort of reck-
less and lavish expenditure which went on in France iu
Louis the XIV /s and XV.'s days, and ended iu bringing
down the tinsel fabric of the old French Monarchy. I sup-
pose FREDERICK THE GREAT could not prevent his relatives
from imitating the French opera splendour ; and then we
all know he was musical, and played the flute himself well
enough for a Prince.
The stage boasts of being the largest in Germany. Per-
502 INTERLUDE ON BAYREUTH CITY,
haps this, amongst other reasons, induced WAGNER to select
402. Bayreuth as the place where he resolved to deal
THE OLD the old operatic system its death-blow by erecting
OPERA
HOUSE. hi s new Shrine and Palace of Art sacred to the
Musical Drama, but, significantly, outside the city. Since
the burning of the Vienna house, the Bayreuth Opera has
been closed, the exits being thought inadequate, as indeed
they are. When the next fire comes, should it attack the
old Opera House, the thing will blaze like tinder. Every-
one is exhorted to visit this costly building, but when they
get in they find it all pitch dark. A bright light from
the bottom of the stage, indeed, streams in, but that only
aggravates matters. Stand with your back to it, facing the
lloyal box, and in a few minutes the gorgeous rows of
carved boxes, the heavy golden candelabra and the rich
faded velvets, will become visible, and you will be rewarded
The house holds about 1,000 people.
I have said that in times past this favoured city has five
times been visited by the plague; it now boasts of being
one of the healthiest places in Bavaria. It
403.
SMELLS OF ought to be. It is deliciously situated amidst
flowing streams and pine woods ; it is 1,060
feet above the sea level, and surrounded by mountains ;
it has a population of 22.077, and the people, whilst
dying at the rate of 24 per annum to the 1,000, increase
at the rate of 30, thus gaining annually six on every
ENTERPRIZE OF BAYREUTHERS. 503
1,000. This may be all true and edifying, I allow, but
the smells (whether or not they have anything to do
with the plague I don't know) are simply awful. As I
walked along the street, I thought I would stand opposite
some shop and just glance at my guide-book, but I would
take care to select one where there was no smell. I could
not find one ; open gratings and gutters poured forth their
heavy effluvia wherever I paused. They tell us now this is
so much more healthy than the new trapped drain. I hope
so, because it is so much more unpleasant. I should not
wonder if a new visitation of the old plague came ere long
to upset this new theory of the blessed sanity of effluvia.
I read in my book, however, that the Bayreuthers are
anxious to alleviate the sick and dying, as well as to educate
404. the young and healthy. Not only have they a
ENTERPRIZB f amou8 public school, where Jews, Turks, infidels.
BAYRECTHERS. heretics, and Christians are indiscriminately
taught, but they have endless " corpse " societies or burial
clubs and hospitals for special classes, all which are
described in words of such prodigious length that my own
poor eloquence withers up as I read them. For instance, a
special infirmary for stone-masons and bricklayers is termed
a " Kranken-und Unterstutzungsverein " for " Manner-und
Steinhauergesellen ."
After a walk down the principal streets I thought I
504 INTERLUDE ON BAYREUTH CITY.
would get to a "platz," or open space, and try and breathe
the "Himlische Luft," of which GOTZ VON
405.
JEAN PAUL BEKLICHINGEN speaks ; so I made for JEAN
PAUL RICHTEU'S statue, in black bronze. The
good man was put up there in 1841, having died in
1825. That is sooner than we build the sepulchres of some
of our prophets. LUDWIG, " Duke of Franks " and the
King of Bavaria, set him up. I do not know who was the
artist not a Canova, certainly. His head is kindly and
commonplace; he wears a flower which looks like a penny
flower in his button-hole; he holds a pencil in one hand
and a pocket-book in the other. He is waiting for an idea !
As he has been waiting exactly forty-two years in all sorts
of weather, the idea will probably never come to him now.
It is painful to think that JEAN PAUL who never in his
life waited a moment for a thought should be doomed by
a heartless sculptor to dawdle on in unpicturesque expectancy
and a frock coat, perhaps for centuries longer ! I really
wonder this did not occur to the artist.
On the whole, I like the Bayreuth people. The barbers
overcharge, the hotel-keepers give you 9.50 marks instead
of ten marks for a gold half-sovereign, because they will
declare it is " worn " ; and the children wear no stockings.
The priests, with full choir, stop and sing hymns in the
streets when they bring out their dead for burial ; and the
publicans plant the cafes amid thick pine-trees, all stuck in
THE HEAT IN 1876. 503
like a real forest, only rootless. The beer But I fear
my information may become too voluminous.
As I sit and write high up in a spacious room of the old
Castle, my windows open, I can look over the sleeping city ;
and by the faint moonlight I think I can just make out the
Wagner Theatre, on a hill beyond the town. It is long past
midnight. The clocks have been striking what I believe to
be half-past two, although it might just as well mean four
o'clock. The night is very still ; even the " Vaterland "
chorus in the " bier-garten " has left off at last. The Ring
of the Nibdungs Rheingold, Walkiire, Siegfried, and
Gdtterd'dmmerung lies open before me; to-morrow after-
noon I shall see the Rheingold.
VI.
THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
7. Rheingold.
THE heat at Bayreuth (August 1876) was intense. The
EMPEROR OF GERMANY, who attended some of the perform-
ances, expressed his astonishment at the eudu-
406.
THE HEAT IN Tauce of the orchestra, who had to work by a
great power of gas sunk in a pit beneath the
506 THE NIBELUN&S RING.
"I should just like," said his Imperial Majesty, "to
go down below and see where my Kapellmeister EICHTEK
sweats " and he went.
Notwithstanding the excessively sultry weather, a vast
company of Art Pilgrims ascended the hill outside the
city, and took their seats nearly every day in WAGNER'S
theatre for a month.
Let the reader become with me in imagination one of
those pilgrims. If I cannot make the sound of WAGNER'S
music ring in his ears. I will try and make a
407.
WAGNER vision of the first Wagner Festival pass before
np ' his eyes. As I contemplate Bayreuth, in that
same month of August 1876, I perceive the whole city
to be given over to a kind of idolatry of WAGNER. The
King appears at times to wave incense before him. LISZT,
in some degree, shares the homage. With his venerable
white head, he looks like an ancient magician, but with an
eye that can still flash fire, and a commanding carriage.
The town is hung with wreaths and flags ; in the shops
nothing but WAGNER portraits, busts, medals of all sorts and
sizes, WAGNER'S works, WAGNER'S Life and Genius, and an
immense German and French literature on the Niebelungen
Saga.
The performance of the Rheingold will live long in my
memory, as the extreme realisation of weird beauty steeped
THE RHINE GIRLS. RHEINGOLD ! 507
in atmosphere such as may be in some other planet,
flushed with sunset or moonrise. This music is
408.
THE RHINE like & land of dreams, into which the spirit breaks
at times, and, hurrying back a million of years,
discovers, on the surface of far-off seas, or dim caverns, the
light that has long since gone out for ever. The elemental
prelude of deep and slumbrous sound wafts us away from
all account of time and space of the present. The vast hall,
full of silent human beings, has been touched by the magi-
cian's wand. All grows dark, and the dim grey-green depths
of the Khine alone become visible. We strain our eyes
into the dimness, and are aware of the deep moving of the
Rhine water. The three Rhine daughters grow visible,
swimming midwater, swimming and singing, guardians of
the Rheingold. What unearthly, unhuman, magical,
snatches of sweetest song ! There is at last realized the
creature of legend, the Undine at once more and less than
human.
The hideous King of the Undergrounds, or Niebelungen,
sits watching these lovely water-maidens he courts them in
vain. The orchestra weaves on its divine Rhine
. music, without which we almost feel the scene
KHEINOOLD 1
must vanish. The soft cries and unearthly but
musical laughter of the Undines, swimming ceaselessly,
begin to give us a strange feeling of limited, monotonous
life, pointing subtilly to the difference between such natures
508 THE KIBELUNG'S RINti.
and our own. But they, too, are waiting for something.
This dim green water is growing oppressive. We feel
ourselves immersed in its depths. At first it was a dream
scene of exquisite beauty now it is almost a prison
in another moment we should struggle to be free, but
suddenly the Rheingold begins to brighten. A shaft of
radiance strikes through the water. The Undines scream
with joy. The Underground King, Alberich, blinks with
astonishment. Then through the whole depth of the Rhine
streams an electric light glowing upon a distant rock
dimmed to softest yellow only by the water. " Rheingold !
Rheingold ! " a wild shout arises joy of the Rhine daugh-
ters ! HAYDN has produced the effect of light in the Creation
by a great burst of sound, " And there was LIGHT ! ! " But,
sublime as is that one chord on LIGHT, the effect here is far
more subtle. We have been kept in dark water for half an
hour. The whole system is made to pine and cry out for
light. It comes at last the light of the flashing of the
Rheingold ! Every fibre in the body quivers with it. It is
as oxygen to the lungs. The eye and whole nervous system
drink it in. \Ve could shout like children with the Rhine
girls over the joy of the Rheingold 1
The whole of this water-scene is of indescribable beauty,
and without a trace of vulgar pantomimic effect.
A lesser man would have made the Rhine water
SUBTLE ART.
lighter at first. As it is, for some seconds after
PLOT.
the curtain rises we can hardly see anything. Slowly the
eye discerns the floating women ; but we still follow them
chiefly by their voices. Alberich is hardly visible ; the music
itself seems to keep down the light; but then the dawn of
splendour of the Rheingold ! That explains all ; the effect
is consummate. WAGNER, it is evident, has superintended
every detail and every nuance. I can understand now his
bursting into tears when the Rhine ladies refused to enter
the new invisible machines which were to float them about
in mid- water.
I will here briefly allude to the plot of the Rheingold.
How Alberich, the King of the Undergrounds, renounces
the love of the Rhine girls to clutch the gold
How he leaves the Rhine dark, and flies with his
PLOT.
treasure to his own Underground caverns, there
to maltreat his wretched hordes of slaves, ^nd compel them
to turn the Rheingold into sumptuous vessels, amongst them
a magic helmet and a Ring whose wearer can change himself
at will into anything. How the gods meanwhile have been
bribing the giants with the promise of the beautiful Freia,
their sister, to build them their Walhalla Palace. How the
giants on the completion of the palace claim Freia, and only
give her up upon the gods extorting the Rheingold from
Alberich and his undergrounds and paying it over to the
monstrous architects. How at last the gods, with Freia, go
over the Rainbow Bridge into the Walhalla to the sound of
510 THE NIBELUNGS RING.
heavenly music, whilst upon the ambrosial air comes from
afar the fitful wail of the Rhine Daughters :
" Eheingold !
Clear and pure,
Show thy glory in the depths,
There alone is Truth and Trust,
False and faithless all above,
Who rejoice ..... 1 "
All this the reader may possibly be familiar with. To dwell
upon each scene is here impossible. I wish to notice the first
employment of what I have called, in Music and
ma COLOUB Morals the Colour Art of the Future. The eye
is prepared for the lurid and horrible interior of
the Niebelungen Caves, where the scourged slaves ply, amid
shrieks, the ceaseless hammer by white clouds of steam shot
with red light. This is used, with varying intensities, to never
pausing music, simply as a sensuous appeal to the eye, and
its effect is a pyschological marvel. All the burden of horror
and pain is in the surging, hissing, crimson cloud. It is
the terrible bridge over which the spectator passes to the
realm of Niebelheim, as the gods pass to Walhalla over the
rainbow. Steam or any other medium, shot with changing
colour, and perhaps accompanied by music the Colour
Symphony is still to come ; its raw elements are present
in the sunset, as the raw elements of music are in the
sounds of nature, and the cries of birds and beasts. Wagner
has perhaps unconsciously flashed the first line of the new
Art upon us in the Rheingold,
THE RAINBOW SCENE. 511
Of the spiritual beauty of the " Rainbow scene," which is.
pictorially, worthy of TURNER, I can hardly speak. Yet
even here the fateful curse that hangs over the
413.
THE RAINBOW Rheingold and all who touch it here, in the
hour of joy and god-like splendour there is a
hint of the final overthrow of the Walhalla and the " Dusk
of the Gods." It is to be seen in the crimson Niebelheim
light upon the mighty ramparts and towers a light that
gives a sober tinge even to the rainbow it is to be heard in
the haunting cry of the Rhine daughters over their lost
treasure, which makes even the happy gods pause on the
threshold of Walhalla. It is felt in the mingled undertones
of the orchestra, breaking forth at last into the strong
closing bars of the Rheingold. A terrible firmness of pur-
pose, beyond the control even of the gods themselves, is
urging forward the course of all things in heaven and earth;
none may go back., none may look behind. The old Anangke
or Necessity of the Greeks is at the bottom of all, and
seems to say alike to the Rhine daughters, the dwarfs, the
giants, and the gods, " Go forward ; the end must come ;
what will be, will be."
The Rheingold lasts for two hours and a half at a stretch,
during which time there is no pause in the music, but
there is also no sign of fatigue in the audience who sit in
rapt attention to the close.
512 THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
IL Walkiire.
With the Walkiire, or "Warrior Daughters of God Wotan
(Wodin), begin the famous three days to which the Rhein-
414. gold, described in my last, was the introduction.
ENTER THE rpk e Q O( J \Y o t a n in his earthly wanderings be-
KING AND *
WAGNER, came the father by a mortal woman of Sieg-
mund and Sieglinde. Upon the interest of one of the
Walkiire, Brilnnhilde, in this couple, and her final sacrifice
of Virgin deity in their cause, this next drama in three acts
turns. Let us enter the theatre about five o'clock. A
fanfare of trumpets outside gives the signal, The lights
are lowered. In the twilight the whole assembly seems
aware that WAGNER and the King are approaching. In the
Royal box I see the two stand for a moment like dark
shadows, the King bowing once to the people amid breathless
silence, broken only by the woe-burdened chords and unquiet
distant thunderings of the orchestra.
The curtain rises. A wild cabin, into which out of the
storm enters Siegmund throws himself, dead with fatigue,
4J5. before a rude fire, and sleeps. In steals Sieg-
BIE ^ rND linde, his sister, the forced wife of Ilunding, a
SIEGLINDE. savage hunter. Thus brother and sister, sepa-
rated from the cradle, meet unknown to each other. We
are at once completely outside all conventional moralities
SIEGMUND AND S1EGLINDE. 13
in an age and faerie sphere in which human passion has to
be contemplated apart from all civilised conditions. We
thus follow breathlessly, without shock, the inexorable
development of the various phases of recognition, self-aban-
donment, confession, and ecstasy which follow. The wild
music flowing to the wild life of the wandering Siegmund,
as he pours it all out to his new friend and protectress,
who revives him with a cooling draught, consoles him, and
already claims him as her deliverer ; the entrance of
Hunding; the fight between him and Siegmund, which is
to take place on the morrow ; the sleeping potion admini-
stered to him by Siegliude, and the long scene at night,
where she steals out, all in white, to Siegmimd these
are graphic and awe-inspiring situations ; the moon spreads
through the room, and the fire dies, and through the
open door are seen the fair, moon-lit woods, and all is
peace this the reader must imagine for himself. Nothing
more searching in delineation of passion was ever con-
ceived than this scene between lovers about to risk all
with fate overhanging them, and hearts filled alternately
with the pain of dread forebodings and an inextinguishable
love.
As the last spark on the hearth dies, the music becomes
flowing and deep, like a broadening river. A strange
red light the light of Wotan falls on the giant oak-
tree, showing the hilt of a sword plunged in there by a
mysterious stranger. He who could draw it should aloiie
33
514 THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
free Sicglindo from her brutal husband. Siegraund rises
and draws it, amidst a great burst of triumphant sound.
This, on the morrow, should give him victory over the coarse
Hunding, for the sword is Wotan's own, hidden there for
his son Siegmund. The deep wealth of sound upon which
the lovers are now buoyed up as they fall into each other's
arms is like the mingling of oceans and rivers and clouds ;
and the strong, terrible chords, to which the curtain again
falls, are as the might of resistless love, hurrying to its
fateful close.
The second act reveals to us the wild Brunnhilde War
Walkiire. With spear in hand she scales the rocks ; the
clouds are about her; she shouts to her com-
416.
BUUNNHILDE'S panions, and her voice mingles with the winds.
As she mounts each crag her notes rise higher
and higher a melody of bewitching, boisterous wildness.
How Wotan bids the War Walkiire defend his favourite
Siegmund in the coming duel with Hunding; how Fricka, his
jealous wife, burns for the death of Siegmund, the mortal
bastard ; how the god gives in weakly, and bids Brunnhilde
destroy him ; how Brunnhilde, a dear, good creature, pro-
tests, and goes at last to her mission, clad in mail and scarlet,
with a heavy heart must be told in few words. From this
moment to the end of the act the excitement, without pause,
goes on, changing in form, but ever increasing. Now the
flying lovers rush on to the rocky stage; the sound of Hun-
THE FIGHT. 515
ding's horn, the cry of his dogs, is in their ears j then all is
again ecstasy ; until Sieglinde breaks out in a strange scene
of passionate remorse at having been the wife of an unloved
man. Her intense love for Siegmund makes her past life
seem too vile. But hark ! and the sound of dogs and horns,
the rushing of wind and crashing of branches, swells in the
orchestra, and Sieglinde faints, and is laid resting on a
rock. Then a passage of unspeakable solemnity occurs with
the re-entrance of Brunnhilde. She stands before Siegmund
come on her fateful errand and the music grows sweet
and solemn, with the majestic Wotan " motif " ; she tells
the hero that whoever looks on her must shortly die; that
she takes the warrior to Walhalla, but that he must fall
in fight. Measured and slow as fate, yet strangely full of
tenderness, is her terrible message. With knightly calm he
listens, and at last, with a burst of love which shakes
Briinnhilde's own heart, he declares that he will kill himself
and his beloved, but they shall not be divided. The Walkiire,
at last overcome, and faithless to Wotan's command,
promises protection.
But the orchestra resumes the stormy music ; the battle
hour approaches ; clouds hurry restlessly through the sky ;
Hunding is close at hand amongst the high crags
^1 7
yonder. With a burning kiss the hero leaves
THE FIGHT. *
Sieglinde, and hurries to meet the foe. She
rises, all is wild, and the air grows stormy and dark around
33 *
516 THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
her ; she calls Siegmund wildly, and rushes forward ; but
too late, she never sees him alive again. On the topmost
rocks we hear, behind the clouds, the warriors shouting and
the arras clashing. It is a fearful moment, and the orchestra
is taxed to the uttermost. The clouds part for a moment
only the bright Briinnhilde is seen floating above her
hero, clad in shining steel and crimson. In vain ! Wotan
himself appears, and shatters Siegmund's magic sword with
his spear. The hero is slain. The clouds now roll aside ;
in terrible red smoke and blinding light, the angry god
stands out. At a word Hunding, the coarse hunter, falls
dead before him ; but the god turns upon poor Briinnhilde,
and, as the curtain falls, curses her for her disobedience.
The storm music and the thunder roll away ; and, after a
tension probably unexampled in dramatic art, we issue
forth into the now cool and darkened air,
418.
is THE eighteen hundred people disperse upon the hill
and roadside, and discuss for an hour in the
temporary cafes their experiences. LISZT I found with his
daughter, MADAME WAGNER, and other ladies, chatting to a
group. The prince and poet of the Romantic School has a
long cigar in his mouth and a large bock of beer in his
hand. People hurry up and are introduced at times he
receives all cordially with " Schon ! Schon ! " I remember
that WAGNER was loudly called for at the end of the second
act, but did not appear. But, oddly enough, before the last
THE WALKURE CHORUS. 517
act, when the theatre was half empty, he came on the stage
and bowed, and was cheered wildly.
The last act opens with a scenic effect which it was anti-
cipated would tax any theatre to render adequately. The
419. chorus of the Walkiire on the rocks, half hidden
, with clouds, as they wait for Briinnhilde, their
VT ALIv URE *
CHORUS. Amazon sister, unconscious of her catastrophe, is
quite unparalleled in its wild and spontaneous splendour.
The cries and shouts are hurled from rock to rock
with waving of arms and clashing of spears and shields.
The troubled sky is in ceaseless motion, the air is filled with
boisterous elemental mirth, and the bursting cries of un-
bridled animal spirits are, somehow, all woven into a kind of
chorus, resting upon such an ocean of orchestral sound as
has certainly never before been heard or conceived by
mortals. Amid thunder and flashes Briinnhilde, dragging
poor rescued Sieglinde, now suddenly appears on the stage,
and what follows must be merely summarised. The despair
of Sieglinde; the devotion of the tender, reckless Briinn-
hilde, inconceivably touching symbol of the devotion which
good women are capable of for each other ; the wild recru-
descence of joy which seizes Sieglinde when Briinnhilde
hands to her, with fervid song, the fragments of Siegmund's
magic sword all that is left of him now, yet enough for
vengeance, enough to win the Rheingold from the Giant
Fafner, enough for the hero Sieglinde is about to bear.
518 THE NIBELUNffS
She is then hurried away to safety, and, with the appropriate
recurring strains in the orchestra, the God "Wo tan at last
approaches.
The favourite Walkiire, deprived of her arms, comes
forth to learn the doom of her disobedience. Some divine
420. necessity compels her banishment from Walhalla,
TOE BLEEP an( j i n fi m 't e iy subtle and complex are the music
OF THE * *
WALKURE. an( j sentiment which follow. Briinnhilde has
been drawn earthwards by human sympathy she will
become whole woman by-and-bye, who has thus stooped
to human affection but earthly love shall destroy her
divinity ; and, meanwhile, parted for ever from her sisters
and her father, who still love her fondly, she shall sleep
amid wild and lonely rocks encircled with fire, waiting for
the lover who, dauntless, shall find her and wake her
there, and make her his earthly bride.
The flight of the sister Walkiire in the storm, with a wild
chorus full of despairing screams, is followed by a protracted
And inconceivably touching parting between the resigned
Briinuhilde and the father, Wotan whose anger has died
away as the sunset sky has slowly faded into deeper and deeper
grey. Then, to long drawn out and enchanting melody,
Briinnhilde's head sinks on her father's breast, and his mind
wanders back to the happy time when she, the War Maiden,
his pride, brought new warriors, the boldest and best, to fill
the Walhalla courts. The poor Walkiire can but sob that
WAGNER'S RECITATIVE. 519
she has loved her father Wotan and Walhalla, and implore
him, if she is to become a mortal's bride, to surround her
rock with, fire, to bar her from all but the bravest. It is
now almost dark ; a faint red light lingers on the supple
yet lordly form of Briinnhilde. A strange swoon seems
to have already seized her; the god lays her gently prostrate
on the rock, then waves her into her long sleep. Then,
retiring suddenly to the back of the stage, he calls for the
Fire God, Loge ; a burst of fire breaks out and runs round
the stage; in another moment the whole background is an
immense wall of rose-coloured flame, which gradually creeps
round the rock. To the most enchanting and dream-like
music of silver bells, harps, and flutes, with an under-current
of bass strings, the sleep of the Walkiire begins ; the god
scales the rocks, stands for a moment in the midst of the
fire, then passes through it out of sight, as the curtain
falls to the silver, peaceful, unearthly cadences, repeated
again and again, swelling and falling, and ceasing at last
leaving the heart, after so much fierce storm, at rest.
III. Siegfried.
The grotesque music given to both Mime and Alberich,
like so much of WAGNER'S misunderstood reci-
421.
WAGNER'S tative, aims, no doubt, at following the inflec-
tions of the human voice as it is affected often
by very commonplace moods, as well as by the meaner
520 THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
impulses of arrogance, vexation, anger, and spite. What
we lose in musical charm we gain in a certain ingenious
sense of reality. I think the power of WAGNER, the solidity
of his work, largely turns upon this. He is never afraid
of length, of silence, even of dulness, caused by protracted
or delayed action. Like DE BALZAC, he knew well how to
work up slowly and surely to a consummate effect, and his
effect never hangs fire, nor is it ever liable to an anticlimax,
that bane of second-rate artists.
A cavern rocky somewhere deep in a forest lies before
us ; and Mime the misshapen thing fit brother of Alberich,
the lord of Niebelheim, or fog-land, works away
at a forge to make a sword fit for who ? In
MIME WOKKS.
he comes, the wild, robust child of the forest
reminding me of the first appearance of that other wild,
robust creation Parsifal. In he comes, driving a fierce
brown bear bridled in sport. Mime the dwarf shrinks back
Mime, who 'has been foster-father to this Siegfried, son of
Sieglinde and Siegmund. He has brought him up in igno-
rance of his parentage, knowing well the dash of Deity in
his blood, and knowing also that could the fragments of
the magic sword, given up by Sieglinde as her most
precious legacy, be somehow welded together again, Sieg-
fried, her son, would be able to wield it with resistless
might and slay the dragon Fafner who keeps the gold.
This accursed gold-heap eternal symbol of ill-gotten
MIME AND SIEGFRIED. 521
wealth and the curse of it forms the magic centre around
which all the actors in this cycle of dramas consciously
or unconsciously move.
The character-contrast between Mime the mean, double-
dealing, cringing, cowardly creature who hopes to use the
young hero for his purposes, and Siegfried the
42o.
MIME AND free, noble, daring youth, with a presentiment of
great destinies before him, both are drawn in large
outline. Great distinction of type, great simplicity of con-
ception and straightforwardness of execution; the master
is sure of his touches and lays them on with a free bold
hand. Siegfried throughout revolts against Mime yet
Mime holds secrets which he burns to know. Who were
his father and mother ? What means his wild, secluded,
lonely life ? He cannot taste broth at Mime's hands with-
out disgust, he cannot talk with him without quarrelling,
he can hardly bear the sight of him, will not believe that
Mime is his father at all; wants a sword that he can-
not break; will have the fragments of the magic sword
" Nothung " welded ; shatters Mime's welding of them,
proceeds to weld them himself.
The welding of Nothung, hammer on anvil in the gloomy
424. cavern, with the regular puffing and blowing
TIIE of the rude bellows the protracted song most
WELDING GIT
THE S\VOKI>. tuneful, almost conventional in form broken
off and resumed, and itself, as it were, welded with
522 THE NIBE 'LUNG'S RING.
every blow into the sword Nothung, produces a very
singular and "seizing" effect. The actors appear to be
entirely lost in their business the audience have come
upon a forge in a very rocky forest cave difficult work is
going on, to very long-winded accompaniment, full of varied
realistic detail. If we want to see the work put through
we must stop ; if not, we may go. But the work cannot be
hastened the welding of that sword is the turning-point of
the drama the wielding of it secures the gold, the ring,
and the helmet ; and the spell of these secures Briinnhilde
for Siegfried the transfer of these treasures wrecks Briinn-
hilde and brings on the final catastrophe. The action is
delayed, but the welding is thorough, and when with a
mighty stroke the anvil is cloven in twain, we know that the
young hero is at last fitted with an irresistible weapon, and
that the drama has moved through one of its most critical
and decisive stages.
The Dragon's Cave the summer woods the coming
together of the various people interested in the gold these
425. are the elements of the next act. There is the
DRAGON'S ^" an derer, the god Wotan in disguise, who
CAVE. originally stole the gold from Alberich, who in
his turn had filched it from the Rhine girls, and who now
thinks he may get it back somehow from Fafner the giant.
Fafner, in the form of a great dragon, lies on it day and
night. There is Alberich, the first robber, hovering about
SIEGFRIED APART. MISE-EN-SCENE. 523
the Neid-hole, or cavern, in the hope of getting back the
treasure ; there is Mime, who about this time makes sure
of the prize in his own mind, as he fancies Siegfried is in
his power, and proposes to employ him to kill Fafner.
Then he will poison him with a draught, and clutch both
magic sword and treasure.
All these old-world scamps meet and talk and eye each
other, and plot and ask riddles and give hints. Siegfried,
meanwhile, holds the key of the great enigma
SIEGFRIED stands completely apart alone in his strength,
simplicity, and might, the holder and wielder of
the sword Nothung with deep scorn in his heart for the
pitiful and mean schemers and quacks by whom he is
surrounded, and with an innate perception, born of com-
muning with nature, of the snares they are laying for
him.
The grimness and hideousness of the cavern and the
Worm-dragon seem to resume the spirit of all the unlovely
wickedness and avarice of Siegfried's rivals. The
MISE-EN- glorious sunshine, the glowing foliage of the
woodlands, the song of wild birds, symbolize
the spirit whilst providing a mise- en-scene for the valour,
the victory, and the love-musings of the young hero.
The Dragon is no doubt the weak point. I believe MR.
524 THE NIBELUNG'S ItlXG.
DANNEEUTHER gave three hundred pounds for him in
London, and brought him over with the utmost
428.
A SORRT care. His tail, I am told, was worked by one
man inside him, and his jaws by another ; but
somehow he could not be got to show fight at the right
time. He was a poor beast; the steam came out of his
mouth too late ; his tail stuck half-way on the wag, and he
had evidently some difficulty in opening his jaws. He was
easily slain, and rolled over conveniently enough, leaving
the treasure in the hands of Siegfried.
Otherwise the weirdness of the whole scene was indescrib-
able. That enchanting summer land that delicious burst
429. of woodland melody that strong contrast be-
tween the blazing sheen of emerald and amber-
lighted trees and the gloomy cavern hard by
that sudden poetic, trance-like pause, full of wild birds and
love dreams, just before the sharp attack on the Dragon,
followed by the repulsive murder of Mime, and the resump-
tion of the same bright love dream immediately afterwards :
this can never fail to impress the dullest sensibility with its
extreme beauty. VOGEL'S Siegfried, as an impersonation,
was on a level with MATERNA'S Briinnhilde. The music to
which the curtain falls on the second act, as Siegfried, wild
with anticipation, follows the bird that flies before him
singing, and showing him the way to Briinnhilde, who lies
on her fire girt rock waiting for him that ocean of summer
CONTRASTS. 525
woodland music upon which a hero's spirit passes into the
consciousness of first love is beyond these halting words.
The contrasts which follow are dramatically admirable.
Old Wotan's gloomy conference with Erda, the mystic
partner of his old-world love, in which he takes
430< stock of the situation, views with mixed feelings
CONTRASTS.
the rise and progress of Siegfried, and with feel-
ings still more mixed the decay of his own power and the
approaching downfall of Walhalla; then his dubious colloquy
with Siegfried, who suddenly confronts him on his way to
the fire-girt rock ; his mingled pride and dignity, together
with his growing sense of being powerless to hinder the
consummation of Briinnhilde's union with the upstart demi-
semi-god ; follow scene after scene with cumulative effect.
The striking episode in which Siegfried breaks the old god's
spear, when it is thrust between him and the unknown
object of his passion; and finally the terrific ocean of
crimson flame through which the hero bursts fearlessly to
the side of the sleeping Walkiire truly these be massive
and monumental conceptions ! Like great world-types they
unroll themselves before us in so many magical scenes of
unsurpassed, dramatic and daring grandeur.
I suppose it will be generally allowed that WAGNER is the
greatest master of love duets that ever wedded words to
music. The absorbing picture of love and jealousy in
526 THE NIBELUNGS RING.
Lohengrin, of pure and impure love subtly contrasted in
Tannhduser passion of love and death in
Tristan a. id Isolde, the unique passages between
LOVE DU^TS.
Parsifal and Kundry passion essentially primeval
touched with a certain divine intensity as is fit in demi-gods
like Siegfried and Briinnhilde these are essential mani-
festations of dramatic force and profound intention, beside
which even the love passages in GOUNOD'S Faust and
Marguerite seem like mere child's play.
The moment has arrived. The majestic Briiunhilde wakes
with all her divine war-maiden instincts still upon her;
confronts the hero who is to win her, at first
432.
THE with terror ; realises slowly, painfully, then irre-
R ' sistibly and ecstatically, the might of human
passion, and surrenders the old heroism of a crumbling
Walhalla, and the dreams of god-like power and indepen-
dence, at the burning touch of human love. Better that
touch of real life than all the flimsy visions of a decaying
mythology nobler the sincerity of human feeling, that seizes
its object and concentrates its sympathies, than the vague,
restless wanderings of old reprobates like Wotan, or the war-
lust of fiery, death-hungry Walkiire such as Briinnhilde was
such as the bride Walkiire will never be again. Hear her.
" O Siegfried !
Lightener world's delight
Life on earth
And laughing lord,
Leave, ah ! leave me I "
THE SURRENDER. 527
And Siegfried but replies :
" Awaken Briinnhilde !
Waken thou maid !
Live to me, laugh to me,
Sweetest delight :
Be mine 1 be mine 1 "
No translation seems to give an adequate vigour or do
justice to the strength and passion of the dialogue, which
ends in a long paean of triumph as the curtain falls and
Siegfried takes his prize.
Hail thou Sun
That shinest around me ;
Hail thou morn
From out the dark;
Hail thou world
That wakes Briinnhild'},
She wakes I she lives I
She laugheth back
My splendid star,
My Briinnhilde's glow.
Mine ever mine,
All of her mine
And only mine,
(JBrunnhilde throws herself into Siegfrieds arms.)
Come, life of me I
Thou light of love !
Thou laughing Death I
528 THE N1BELUNGPS RING.
IV. The Gotterdammerung .
The Niebelt/ng's Ring closes with the "Dusk of the Gods. 71
The truly prodigious way in \vhich all the leading subjects
433. are repeated, inverted and worked up in the
THE VISION mus i c o f this last colossal drama cannot be de-
OF THE
NORNS. scribed. The Wotan Melody perhaps the finest
blown on trumpets outside the theatre, rang out far over
hill and dale, and floated like an ominous blast to the town
below. At the familiar sound the people flock to their seats
in the theatre. The first melodies of the Rkeingold break
from the orchestra, and the Norns or Fates are seen weaving
the last of their ropes ; they see as they weave the story of
Siegfried and Briinnhilde they see the gods growing old
they trace the history of Wotan's earth love they start
with horror as they at last see the flames rising in a vision
round Walhalla. The rope breaks ; the Norns vanish.
The day dawns to a clear subject worked in skilful
counterpoint, and the farewell scene between Briinnhilde
434 t and her new mate, Siegfried, as he parts from
SIEGFRIED ner to seek knightly adventures, now absorbs
LEAVES
BHONNHILDE. us> jj er sorrow at parting is almost drowned
by her feeling of pride in him and the thought of glorious
war ; and here the Walkiire nature breaks out in her. She
would fain follow him, but this may not be ; and as she is
THE HOUSE OF HAGEN. 5:20
about to be left again on her fire-girt rock, she scales one
height after another, shouting a wild and ecstatic adieu to
the hero, who is heard galloping away to a strange mixture
of Rhine music and a peculiar, joyous, scampering subject,
which, together with his horn-blast, always heralds his
coming and going.
But the curse of the Gold is upon him, and death, and
worse than death, is brewing for him in the house of
Hagen, hateful bastard son of Dwarf Alberich,
4oi>.
THE HODSE by a mortal woman. Hagen lives with his
brother on Rhine-banks, when Siegfried, as a
wandering knight, appears at his halls. Hagen, Ghunter,
the brother, and the fair sister, Gutrune, are sitting
together. Hagen, the instrument of Alberich, is wholly
bent on getting back the Rheingold. He tells Ghunter
of the sleeping Briinnhilde, who can alone be approached
by Siegfried, and inflames his desire to seize her. At
this moment Siegfried's horn is heard; he enters, and
the plot thickens. He is soon given a drink which makes
him forget every woman he has known before, even poor
Briinnhilde. Siegfried, thus bewitched, then proceeds to
fall in love with Gutrune, and listens to the tale of Briinn-
hilde on the flame-girt rock with astonishment, swears
friendship to Ghunter, and undertakes to assume his friend's
shape by magic, cross the flames, seize his own Briinnhilde,
and hand her over to Ghunter.
34
530 THE NIBELUNG'S RING.
From this moment the horrible plot is harrowing in the
extreme. No art, no music, no magic can reconcile us to
what follows ; the horror is piled up. The scene
436.
CAITURE OP changes. Briinnhilde waits on her rock ; hears
>E 'a horse and Siegfried's horn, but with something
jarring and false about it; but she heeds not that, he
returns ! The fire is crossed, a warrior appears on the
height. She flies to throw herself into his arms the form
of Ghunter is before her ! How he coolly hands her over
to the real Ghunter, who is waiting ; her horror and
bewildering despair ; his callous indifference and complete
absence of all memory of her, which she cannot revive in
him ; the meeting of the t\vo couples, Briinnhilde and
Ghunter with Siegfried and his new bride, Gutrune ; the
terrible scene between Briinnhilde and Siegfried before
the household and retainers of Hagen, in which she
declares Gutrune's husband to be hers ; the jealous
frenzy of Ghunter and the death of Siegfried, which is
now plotted and presently carried out by stabbing in
the back all this it is impossible here to do more than
summarise.
A brief and exquisite episode between the Rhine-daughters
and Siegfried, chiefly a treble trio by the floating nymphs
of sustained and enchanting beauty, relieves the pressure of
horror we have just been going through from the despair
and fury of Briinnhilde, whose wild cries and heart-rending
gestures can never be forgotten.
THE MURDER. THE END. 531
Then comes, at last, the beginning of the end. Siegfried,
seated with Hagen, Ghunter, and warriors, drinks of a cup
which restores his memory, and begins to relate
A.Q7
his past life : as he advances in his narrative, full
THE MURDER.
of wondrous declamation and music, he at length
nears the Briinnhilde episode ; snatches of the Walkiire and
the fire-sleep music break out ; a strange fervour seizes him ;
he tells of the embrace on the rock, and his mind begins to
reel with sudden perplexity. But it is enough ! At this
point Hagen stabs him in the back. As he dies his thoughts
grow clear. Briinnhilde's love returns he sees but her,
dreams of her in his dying swoon; although she is not
present she, his first, last love, fills his latest consciousness.
The struggle for the Ring which follows, the suicide of
Ghunter, the sudden apparition of Briinnhilde, introduce the
last episode of striking beauty. The scenery from
this point becomes indescribable. The n.oon is
TUB END.
full upon the ruffled Rhine- waters ; the tall
funeral tapers flash on the steel helms of the retainers ;
the body of Siegfried, clad in mail, lies in the middle of the
stage ; and the stately form of the Walkiire is isolated by
his side, as the crowd falls to right and left.
Whilst an immense funeral pyre is being built up in
the background beside the Rhine-waters, Briinnhilde makes
her last reconciliation with Siegfried. As she gazes on his
pallid face she reads that dying recognition. She under-
34 *
532 THE NIBELUNG'S EING.
stands, at last, the magic spell that was on him. Her love
towers above everything else she stands there the embodi-
ment of the sublime trust in love beyond sight, that believes
and lasts out against all adverse shocks, and is faithful even
unto death. She has known divine might in the halls of
Walhalla, she has had the power of the Ring and the power
of Gold, and enjoyed all fame of war and victory, and now,
with her latest breath, comes solemnly forth what is the
conclusion of the whole drama, " Blessedness, through joy
and sorrow, comes to us from Love unquenchable alone ! "
With this she moves in the moonlight towards the Rhine.
She draws the Ring of the Rheingold the cause of such
grief and manifold pain from the hero's finger, and flings
it back into the Rhine, from whence at the commencement
it was snatched by Alberich.
The Walkiire's black war-horse has been brought to her ;
she waves high a flaming torch, and hurls it upon the bier ;
the fire rises in lurid columns. She mounts her steed and
leaps into the flames.
At that moment, in the awful glow of the flaming pyre,
the waters, still flashing with moonlight in the background,
begin to swell and advance, and the llhine-daughters, sing-
ing the wildest Rhine music, are seen floating to and fro.
Beyond, a ruddier light broadens, until the distant sky
discloses the courts of the Walhalla in flames. With a
crash in the foreground the house of Hagen falls ; and
whilst the mighty conflagration flares up in the distance.
A SPEECH BY WAGNER. 533
the Rhine-waters, to rushing music, advance and submerge
the whole of the stage.
Thus, with a scene of unequalled dramatic splendour,
ends the fourth and last immense drama jf the Niebelung's
Ring. This is not the place for fuller criticism
TcO7.
A SPEECH of such a work. At the close of it the j>ent-
' up enthusiasm of the public rose to a pitch of
frenzy. They stood up, and, turning to the Royal box,
which WAGNER had left, shouted to the King, who remained
seated and bowed graciously. The plaudits continuing, His
Majesty motioned to the stage. The people turned, and in
a moment WAGNER, dressed in plain black, with his hat in
one hand, stepped out from the middle of the curtain, and
stood motionless with his grey head uncovered until repeated
cries of " Sit down ! " " Sit down ! " and " Hush ! " had
calmed the assembly. WAGNER then spoke very quietly,
and I regret that not hearing him quite distinctly at
moments I am unable to render verbatim a speech which
has doubtless been elsewhere recorded. I understood him
to say he had taken many years in preparing this work ;
that he had presented a Saga of the Niebelung in the
belief that it dealt with subjects peculiarly congenial to the
Germanic races ; that a new and national development of
the drama was now within their reach; he believed that
they had been satisfied with what they had listened to,
so that it had been to the many assembled there a real
534 THE NIBELUNG'S UING.
Festspicl. He then thanked the King for his support and
encouragement ; and, the curtain being suddenly lifted, all
the crowd of musicians and actors who had taken part in
the Festival stood ranged, and WAGNER, turning round,
thanked them in the warmest terms for their devotion and
assistance.
So ended the first great Wagner Festival, held at Bay-
reuth'in 1876.
As some people seem to have considerable difficulty in
mastering the plot of the Nibelung's Ring, I venture to
offer a rough skeleton account of it, which may profitably
be studied before or after witnessing the four dramas.
L
RHEINGOLD.
SCENE I. The sun irradiating the depths of the river, becomes in the
myth mythos, I ought to say a concrete treasure Rhinegold. It has
marvellous properties, and if stolen and forged into a ring, guides its owner
to all the hidden gold-mines of the earth. But he who owns the gold must
renounce love. Three Rhine girls guard the gold. Alberich, King of the
Undergrounds, a hideous dwarf, makes love to the Under- water girls of the
Rhine, is rejected, renounces love, but clutches the gold, and makes ctf with
it to Nibelheim fog-land his underground caves.
SCENE II. Wotan, King of Gods, tired of love, has employed giants to
build him a majestic palace, and offered them Freia, Goddess of Love, as
payment. The other gods refuse to part with Freia when the palace is
done, and Wotan has nothing left which the giants will take instead. The
clever fire-god Loge hears of the Rhine gold, now in Alberich's possession.
Offers it to the giants. Offer accepted, and Loge and Wotan go off to
steal it.
SCENE III. Loge and Wotan enter Nibelheim. Alberich displays the
WALKURE. 535
gold ; also a cap, which enables the wearer to assume any form. At Logo's
suggestion, he becomes a toad, just for fun, is captured, and the ring and all
his wealth passes over to Wotan, but not before the ring is cursed by Alberich,
and destined henceforth to bring misery and disaster to its owner.
SCENE IV. The gold and fatal ring are got rid of to the giants, who take
the whole inpayment; Freia, who gives youth and joy to the gods, is released,
and the gods walk processionally into their new palace, over a beautiful
rainbow bridge. Curtain falls.
II.
WALKUUE.
SCENE I. Opens as Siegmund, a son of earth-woman by god Wotan, staggers
into a log hut, breathless, and falls prostrate with fatigue. Flying from his
enemies, he has found shelter but wiisi a ? In Hunding's hut. Enter Sieg-
linde, daughter of earth-woman by god Wotan; brother and sister, unknown
to each other, converse. Hunding enters, and aL 1 three converse The situation
dawns on them, and Hunding, respecting his guest, recognises his foe, and
summons him to mortal combat on the morrow. That night, in a stolen
interview, Sieglinde and Siegmund arrange matters ; a magic sword left
sticking in a big tree by Wotan, is claimed by Siegmund and drawn forth,
that being the only provision made by the god for his gallant offspring. TLo
lovers escape together.
SCENE II. Father Wotan parleys with the war maidens anent the coming
duel of Siegmund with Hunding. Father Wotan parleys with his wife Fricka
on the same subject. Fricka is mad for the death of the irregular son
Siegmond. Wotan, with bleeding heart, at last yields, and Walkiire Briinn-
hilde has commission to get him well slain in the fight. Warlike, but tender,
Briinnhilde appears to Siegmund, and tells him of his fate, but is melted at
the spectacle of the despairing lovers, and goes over in disobedience to
their cause, protects the hero in the duel, but is foiled by Wotan, who comes
in as a most detestable dcus ex machind, and gets his own son killed after all.
Briinnhilde takes care of poor Sieglinde about to become the mother of
Siegfried, and gives her the fragments of the magic sword, only shattered
by the might of Wotan. Briinnhilde, for her disobedience, loses her divinity,
and is laid to sleep on a fire-encompassed rock. Having stooped to love,
she is now handed over to the love of a mortal, only the lover must be brave,
and will have to get through the fire and claim her, which brings us to the
threshold of the third drama Sieyfried.
53G THE NIBELUNG'S KING.
IIL
SIEGFRIED
SCENE I. Sieglinde has died giving birth to Siegfried. Mime (Alberich's
deformed brother), who lives in a wood, has sheltered her, and, knowing of the
secret of the hero she has given birth to, his demi-godhood, and the invincible
sword he is to wield, the fragments of which are in Mime's possession, the
shrewd dwarf brings him up with care, and intends to make him by-and-by
slay Fafner, the giant, who, in the disguise of a dragon, keeps the gold
stolen for the giants by the gods from Alberich. The first scene concludes
with the successful mending of the broken sword by the combined efforts of
Siegfried, now grown to manhood, and his foster-father, Mime.
SCENE II. All parties interested are now found lurking about the hole
where Fafner watches the gold. The old scapegrace of a god Wotan comes
prowling about, partly curious to see his grandson, Siegfried, who is to wield
the magic sword partly with his eye on the gold. Alberich turns up at the
hole watching the main chance, and ready to clutch at his lost treasure.
Mime makes sure of it when Siegfried has killed the dragon. He means to
bring him a sleep-drink, slay him, and get the gold. Presently the dragon
is slain. Mime offers the drink ; Siegfried sees through him, and slays him
too. Having by chance put his finger, stained with dragon's blood, to hia
lips, he suddenly understands the cry of the birds in the branches. One
bird sings out loud and clear, and tells of the maid who lies, fire-surrounded,
on a rock. Siegfried follows the magic bird, who is to lead him to
Briinnhilde.
SCENE IIL On his way he meets Wotan, who opposes his spear, to test
his descendant's prowess and power. Siegfried breaks it with his magio
sword, and with it scatters the might of Walhalla. He reaches the fire-rock
bursts through the flames, and claims Briinnhilde as his brido.
IV.
GOTTERDASIMEUUNG.
Siegfried having left Briinnhilde in search of knightly adventure, comes
to the Rhine castle of Hagen. There he is drugged with a magic potion by
Hagen's daughter, Gutrune, who wants to marry him. Said potion causes
him to forget his love for Briinnhilde and fall in love with Gutrune. He
GOTTERLAMMEKUNG. 537
row promises to go with her brother, Gunther, and capture Briinnhilde on
her fire-surrounded rock and hand her over to Gunther. Arrives -with him,
seizes Briinnhilde, and hands her over. The frightful situation is then
worked out in Hagen's castle by the Rhine. Siegfried appears as Gutrune's
lover, Gunther as Briinnhilde's ; they all four meet. Briinnhilde is puzzled,
and falls into despair at not being recognised by Siegfried, who is under a
spell. In his life-time the harrowing mystery is never solved, but before his
assassination by Hagen he partially recovers his memory. Whilst reciting
the story of his life he is suddenly stabbed. Briinnhilde then comes on the
scene to find him dead ; but the truth that he has been bewitched dawns
upon her. She proclaims him tender and true in death. They heap up
logs ; he is hoisted on to the pile, but not before Briinnhilde has taken the
fatal ring from the hero's finger, and cast it back into the Rhine. The Rhine
girls appear on the surface singing. The air darkens, the flames rise.
Briinnhilde's war-horse is led out for the last time ; horse and Walkiire leap
into the flames. The Rhine swells up to the foot-lights, washing over every-
thing, and extinguishing the funeral pile ; and the house of Hagen pillars,
doors, and lintel falls into ruin.
538
VII.
INTERLUDE
ON TANNHAUSSER AND LOHENGRIN.
THE overture to Tannhduser and the prelude to Lohengrin
were the first fragments of WAGNER which arrested seriously
440 the attention of people in England about 1860,
WAGNER'S an d J e d some of us to think that perhaps he
MUSIC,
i860. might have a future before him. The French
had already made up their minds that he had none, and
M. FE"TIS, in his great Dictionnaire des Musiciens, had
boldly written as late as 1866: "To-day the transient
curiosity about WAGNER is satisfied ; indifference has come,
and the so-called music of the future is already a thing of
the past."
It is quite surprising how little even good musicians, who
studied WAGNER'S scores and tried over the arrangements
THE DRAMAS PLACED. 539
a quatre mains suspected the real character of a great deal
of his music. I distinctly recollect one of the best musicians
in England declaring, about 1859, that although the
beginning and end of the Tannhduser overture were admir-
able, there seemed to him a good deal of chaos about the
middle; and chaos it undoubtedly sounded as it used in
those days to be played in England. The secret of subduing
the strings and playing the high notes in tune pp, thus
striking the elastic balance of the whole work, allowing no
part to drop, but realising the grand unity and true subor-
dination of each part to the whole these things were but
slowly learned. In WAGNER'S music it is not sufficient to
play the notes, or even attend to the p's and f's ; each
musician must understand the mind of the composer feel
his intention, and discover the secret of the special part
which he has to play in the whole. The Waguerian
orchestra is not a machine ; it is a living organism.
The Tannhduser and the Lohengrin are the two first of
the legendary dramas which serve to illustrate the Christian
chivalry and religious aspirations of the Middle
TUB DRAMAS Ages, in conflict on the one side with the narrow
ideals of Catholicism, and on the other with the
free instincts of human nature. Parsifal forms with them
a great Trilogy of Christian legends, as the Ring of the
Niebelungen forms a Tetralogy of Pagan Rhine and Norse
legends. Both series of sacred and profane myths in the
540 ON TANNHAUSER AND LOHENGRIN.
hands of WAGNER, whilst striking the great key-notes of
Paganism and Catholicism, become the fitting and appro-
priate vehicles for the display of the ever-recurrent struggles
of the human heart now in the grip of inexorable fate
now passion-tossed, at war with itself and with time
soothed with spaces of calm nattered with the dream of
ineffable joys filled with sublime hopes; and content at
last with far-off glimpses of God.
But in these dramas all is vast and elemental. The feel-
ings are mightier and more intense than anything on earth ;
the mould of the characters is colossal. All
that is transitory, personal, accidental in love.
IDEAL TYPES.
joy, revenge, despair, seems to have dropped
away as we gaze at the rapture of Elsa or the despair of
Tannhauser. We are face to face with the unalterable types
of human Tragedy; each phase as it passes resumes the
whole of what is true and always true essentially the same
in the inmost fibre of every soul, amidst every local change
of time and circumstance.
This representative character lifts Wagnerian drama in
conception, at least to a level with that of SHAKSPERE'S
highest flight. I do not compare the two as writers.
SIIAKSPERE had only the stage to think of, WAGNER wrote
with reference to music, and, although sublime in parts, his
literary work is very uneven, but, couched in the language
of myth and metaphor, it is intensely real, and has that
USE OF MYTH. 541
one quality of all great work, it appeals to what does tot
change in the heart of man as the ages roll on " it speaks
to time and to Eternity."
VIII.
"TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN."
THE drama oi Tannhduser may be said to have burst upon
WAGNER with the force of an imperious inspiration. He
had been laying siege to the oracle in the Flying
44o.
USE OP Dutchman and Rienzi, but the answer was un-
certain and confused. Essentially a man of his
age, filled with a passionate sympathy with its desires and
the prophetic instinct of its unreconciled needs, WAGNER
had been restlessly seeking in the complex histories and
clear myths of the Past for some adequate arena for the
interpretation of the Present. He had long felt that the
life problem of the nineteenth century was the reconciliation
of the Old and New World Spirits, the harmony of the
Secular and Religious life. The problem has apparently
been given up as hopeless by the new ideal school of
ROSSETTI, MORRIS, and BURNE JONES, who avowedly are dead
to the present, and live a dream-life, meditating the eternal
Realities of Legend, in an unreal garden of the Palingenesis.
512 "TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN: 1
But with them the Art of the Present is used to glorify the
Myth of the Past ; with WAGNER the Myth of the Past is
used to illustrate and enhance the Life of the Present.
The nearest approach to WAGNER'S use of the myth is
to be found in TENNYSON'S Idylls of the King where the
444. simple lines of the old narrative are used to
TENNYSON in us trate a wide range of modern thought and
WAGNER, feeling; but no oppression of heart is lifted, no
problem is even stated, much less solved. In Tannhiiuser
WAGNER has at least seized with unexampled force those
two leading thoughts with which our age is struggling :
First, the tremendous empire of the senses; second, the
immense supremacy of the soul. And his typical knight,
in whom both these fierce currents meet and mingle, illus-
trates the conspicuous failure of the Roman Christianity to
unite both streams into one river of life.
Protestantism, though doubtless more true, with its
married clergy and its liberal fees to the secular life, is only
445. more successful because less logical than Roman-
DEFECTS OF j sm> j^g profession and practice hardly cohere.
PROTESTANT-
ISM. The language of the Prayer-book contains still
the anathema on the senses the baptismal service is still
the white-washing of appetites not conceived of as natural
and right, but as carnal and evil the Communion Service
is still in the spirit and mostly in the very letter of the
OUR CHURCH AND HER SERMONS. 543
Mass. No ; our popular or unpopular religion in theory,
whatever it may be in practice, can grapple with the
Senses alone, but it is by crushing them, and that is the
ascetic Romanism. It can grapple with the Soul alone, but
it is by isolating it, and that is the mystic Romanism. But
how to blend the two without defrauding either, that the
Church does not teach ; it has no theory on the subject, it
addresses itself to each side of life separately, it is just
where ST. SIMEON STYLITES or ST. BENEDICT left it ages
ago. The Romanist or Ritualist is quite right when he
says we must go back to those times ; with our present
theories we must either go backwards or forwards, we cannot
stand still.
This is what people really mean when they say so often
that we are in a Transition Age. What does the Church
446. do ? In theory she is simply ascetic and monas-
OCR CHURCH t - c> g^ p ra y S f or the extinction of the senses
AXI) HE It
SERMONS. on h er spiritual column, and for the interior
development of tne spirit in tne silence of her cloister,
and her activities are confined to works of necessity,
charity, and disciplinary sacrifice. This may seem an unfair
account of Protestant teaching at least; and so it is, for
happily both Protestant and Catholic preachers are more
human than their own theories, but their theories remain,
and their real antagonism to the whole truth of life remains,
and it is reflected in the sermons that are commonly heard
544 " TANNHAU8ER" AND " LOHENGRIN.'*
and which consist mainly of the STYLITES or the BENEDICT
theology.
This is, in a word, the Counsel of Perfeation, what
Sunday by Sunday we have mainly to listen to in the
pulpit :
1. Shun the natural desires.
2. Work out your salvation in meditation and prayer.
3. Labour for the necessaries of life and for the poor and
sick.
All good and excellent; but such platitudes shrivel like
flies in an oven when confronted with the two burning
questions of the day :
1. The Tremendous Empire of the Senses.
2. The Immense Supremacy of the Soul ; and how to
reconcile them.
WAGNER, I need hardly say, has not answered the ques-
tion in Tannhduser, but he has placed it before us with
admirable force and clearness, and shown us once for all
how helpless and incapable the logical, if not infallible,
Roman Church is to deal with it.
.
The overture to Tannhiiuser will hold its own by the side
of Fidelia, Der Freyschutz, or the Midsummer Night's
447. Dream. Larger in mould than the exquisite
T ?URK V TW~ P relude to Lohengrin, it resumes the general
TANNHAUSER - atmospheres of the drama with equal breadth
and clearness. The whole race of the Ghibellines is summed
THE OVERTURE TO TANNHAUSER. 545
up iri Tannhauser, indomitable knight at once the enemy
and the spiritual slave of Home Pagan, with an inex-
haustible passion for the world and all that is in the
world, an insatiable thirst for conquest, an ambition put to
sleep by the senses for awhile only to break out into wilder
life at the magic call of free poetic minstrelsy Catholic
and devotee, by a reaction as tremendous as the storm of
human passion which sent him astray strong, reckless,
thorough, and sublime in his despair to the last, when pity-
ing heaven touches into blossom the inexorable staff, and
the soul of Tannhiiuser finds in heaven with his beloved the
peace and mercy denied him by the Vicar of God upon
earth. Such is the spirit and such are the atmospheres
that seem to roll and unroll before us like clouds of black
and purple crimson and opaline fires as we listen to the
massive, simple, yet richly-clothed subjects of this dramatic
overture.
First leading idea of the overture the quiet impassioned
chant of the Pilgrims steals out of the distance ; that chant
so subtly woven into the changing fabric of the drama, run-
ning through it like a scarlet thread, now associated with
the stupid mechanical patter of dull monks, flouting the
merry sunshine with their sleepy dirge; now giving expres-
sion to Tannhauser's hungry repentance, like the severe yet
pardoning voice of a recording angel ; now in the deepen-
ing twilight touched with the sad hues of sunset, and
lifted away from the unhappy knight like the music of
35
546 "TANNHAUSER" AND " LOHENG&IN."
heaven heard without by one who must not enter; now
goading him to the madness of despair with its insulting
hope of salvation not for him ; and lastly thundered as
from heaven's open portals like a great judgment on the
Papal blasphemy for cursing what God has not cursed
a shout and clarion of joy in the presence of the angels
of God over one sinner that repcnteth. Such is the
significance of this incomparable motive of the Pilgrims'
chant.
The procession draws near, the theme develops and swells,
and the procession passes and the chant dies away to give
sudden place to the second idea; for now the
4-18.
THE VENUS- unhallowed spells of the Venus-berg are upon
us, the vapours rise and twist, the sprites and
forms of women mingling in wild dances and vanishing
amidst the hissing of waterfalls and jets of rose and purple
flame, and vistas of green sward between rocks of crystal,
and far within, for a moment unveiled and shameless,
the fatally fair old-world enchantress, Venus, Satanic rival
of Holy Mary. It is but a glimpse; the second subject
has been clearly affirmed, and gives place to the third,
which is the free element in Tannhauser's spirit : that
immense independence which at one time asserts his will
to break through the barrier of the Church and enjoy all
earthly pleasures, and at another refuses to be held by the
bonds of sense and will back to heaven and grace. Never
CLOSE. 547
a slave that is the key-note of Tannhiiuser's song the
same which he flings at Venus in the first act, and at the
assembled knights and ladies in the second. Reckless,
defiant even in his despair, bursting alike the bonds of
sacerdotalism and sensuality, until he hails his last judgment
and spiritual emancipation in death.
The gentle love of Elizabeth, the faithful friendship of
Wclfran, are alone absent from the overture; but the
one is really as much drowned in religion as
the other is absorbed by the complete useless -
CLOSE.
ness of Wolfrau's fidelity and the ultimate
triumph of Tannhauser. The overture ends with a sus-
tained effort which, before the true rendering of the work
was understood in England, subjected the audience to an
almost intolerable strain. The pilgrims' chant is at last
thrown out of semibreves and crotchets, into prolonged
breves and semibreves, with a continuous forte and an inces-
sant shrill violin accompaniment of wearing yet tireless
activity and intensity. This is the divine judgment emphasis
this is the reversal of the Papal decree this is the re-
demption of human nature struggling with its opposite and
indomitable tendencies, the victory that has overcome the
world, the earthly and heavenly passion, seen for the first
time in the hour of death, in supreme harmony as one and
indivisible.
35
548 "TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN."
ACT I.
After this immense introduction, which at once satisfies all
our keenly aroused sensibilities, we find ourselves in that
quiet region of contemplation, " above all pain,
vet pitying all distress/' whence we can witness
VENUS.
undisturbed the pageantry of pleasure, remorse,
love, sacrifice, and victory, which is about to pass before us.
In the glamour of roseate hues, smitten with the green
glow as of prismatic light seen through ice, with vapours
perfumed and aromatic rising in white clouds and dissolving
in thin fleecy tints like sea-foam, the grotto of the Venus
of the Yenus-berg bursts upon us. The revelry seems at its
wildest. We see the whirling of Bacchantes, but all is
somewhat dim as in a dream or a dissolving view. The
noisy music gives place to an exquisite siren-strain a
chorus of twenty bars only it is the unearthly echo of
magic voices calling the votaries of pleasure to the un-
hallowed delights of Holda, the dethroned Venus, once
queen of heaven, now banished in disgrace to the bowels of
the earth in the depths of the Venus-berg. Trenchant
sarcasm on the helplessness of ascetic theology to mould
the " great glad aboriginal instincts " into its system !
Strange Nemesis of the religion of humanity, that the love
of the sexes, made beautiful at least, if not holy, at Athens,
should be relegated by Christian Rome to the infernal
regions, that subterranean heaven of the Venus-berg, where
TANNKAUSER AND VENUS. 549
love might lose its purity without losing its power and
become bitter !
A fatigue and stillness fall, we scarce know how, over the
scene, the music droops, a white cloud rolls across and veils
the groups as they sink on the mossy banks or disappear
into the rose and emerald caverns. A last faint strain
reaches our ears and dies away, we are alone with the sleep-
ing Tannhauser and his enchantress Holda.
Tannhauser awakes. He has been dreaming, but not of
Holda's love, not of the grotto; its delights are worn out
for him, he is inwardly sated, the chain begins to
451.
TANNHAUSER gall him. Bells are ringing in his ears, happy
AND VENUS, iii.ij.-ii- . i J-
bells that tinkle in mountain glens, reminding
him of the happy earth, its flowers not these suffocating
exotics not these intense and slumbrous perfumes but
fresh woodlands, the horn of the hunter, the notes of wild
birds. He longs once more for the nightingale, and the
morning sunlight that never reaches him here. And then
comes one of those delicate perceptions into the deeps of
human nature as the knight explains to the chiding goddess
that a mortal cannot always enjoy thus; that belongs to
the eternally young and vigorous gods. His own nature
of earth is ill matched with pleasure alone ; it clogs, it
pains him ; lie pines for earth with all its sorrows, ho
aspires from the heart of pleasure, from the paradise of the
senses, to the life of action and sacrifice, to the heaven'
S50 TANNHAUSEE" AND "LOHENGRIN."
of the soul. The dormant energies of the true knight
awaken and he must away. The famous song which forms
the second feature in the overture now breaks from him as
harp in hand he confronts the angry goddess, and, whilst
singing her praises, declares that he will go. Again a subtle
touch, the genuine tribute to the worth of Venus as far as
she goes; but the free assertion that, isolated alike from
the activities and disciplinary sorrows of earth, she fills but
a part of life. The soul reaches out from the garden of
the senses to a wider world, it is oppressed by the o'erarch-
ing roof of the Venus-berg however crystalline and rosy,
it sighs for the blue dome of the illimitable sky.
All this is unintelligible to Holda, the impersonation of
the senses, and, like many an angry woman, she alternately
chides and coaxes and storms, not perceiving that
her power is gone and that her late slave, how-
TUE PARTING.
ever respectful, is free, and determined to remain
so. The allegory of life is now closely clung to in the
skilful dialogue. Having stormed in vain, the forsaken
charmer cries bitterly, " Come back, come back ! try and
believe what I can be to you again."
" I wish no longer for your gifts."
"Oh, if you should long again, do not let your pride
keep you from my arms ! "
Then summing up the extreme statement of the revulsion
of feeling which inspires him, "My longings are not for
CHANGE TO THE UPPER EA11TH. 551
your pleasures but for battle. Listen, and know once for
all, goddess, that I seek the Grave and I aspire to Death ! "
" And if Death andthe Grave reject you ? "
" Death and the Grave are in my heart, and Repentance
is my Peace ! "
" There is no Best or Salvation for you. I alone can give
you Peace and Heaven."
Then, in a climax, the final note of the situation, nay,
the key-note of the whole drama, is struck.
" Goddess of the Senses, in thee is not my Rest, but in
Mary!" At the name of the most blessed Virgin, her
successful rival, a loud clap of thunder shakes the grotto,
and a dense cloud rolls over the stage, and Tannhauser finds
himself alone, but, as the thick white vapours part, the whole
scene has shifted.
One of those sudden atmospheric changes in which
WAGNER revels now takes place, reminding us of the change
453. from the lurid fire-scene on the Walkiire's rock
CHANGE TO
to the midsummer sleep of the Walkiire maiden
THE UPPER
EAKTH. w hen Siegfried finds her there.
The grotto of the Venus-berg has vanished, with its purple
shadows and rainbow lights, and dim recesses of mystery
and underground magic the free summer woods in the
glory of May sunshine are before us, an old baronial castle
crowns one of the near declivities. Tannhauser finds him-
self not far from a wayside shrine and crucifix, on a wood-
552 "TANNHAUSER" AND " LOHENGRIN."
land slope reclines a young shepherd, the tinlde of sheep-
bells mingles with the artless notes of the rustic pipe. He
is skilfully woven into the drama with his new life
of the spring and innocence and free sweet nature, and
forms a subtle link between the artificially-lighted midnight
of the Venus-berg and the bright woods and mountains of a
smiling earth. The shepherd sings in his quaint melody of
his dream he has had of a longing to follow Dame Holda
into the Venus-berg symbol of an universal experience, it
is the rustic's vague idea of the artificial luxury and dis-
sipation of great cities. He awakes (happily for him) to
the sweet routine of the summer pastures, the woodland
notes, the rustic flute.
Play on, thou simple boy ; the two worlds that meet in
yonder knightly soul are not for thee ; thou wilt never know
the depth either of his agony or his joy it is not given to
everyone to explore the magic haunt of the Venus-berg, and
then surrender at discretion to Holy Mary 1
The chorus of the pilgrims taking up the first subject
now approaches. Solemnly the cowled monks pass in
front of the shrine, uttering a prayer to the
454.
PILGRIMS crucified One, and a greeting to the Virgin
mother. To Rome they are bound, to seek free
grace and rest in absolution from sin at the hands of
Holy Church. The chant is the very embodiment of
Tannhauser's own aspirations, and as the pilgrims disappear,
HUNTEES PASS. 553
he falls at the foot of the crucifix and takes up the
burden of the melodious prayer. Faint strains from the
distant pilgrims come wafted on the air, a sound of holy
bells is in his ears, his soul is bathed for the first time, after
how many years ! in the sweet and recreating emotion of
penitence which seems to restore him to himself, and he
vows never to rest till he too has found in a pilgrimage to
Rome that pardon and peace which Rome alone can give.
Suddenly hunting-horns break up his meditations, and a
gay troop headed by the Landgrave and his knights come
thronging down the mountain slope, and find
4o5
HUNTERS the pilgrim Tannhauser absorbed in prayer.
The influence which others have upon a man's
thoughts about himself is now happily illustrated. Tann-
hauser, now recognised as the famous m'^strel knight by
the Landgrave and his friend Wolfran, at first will not hear
of joining them. He is absorbed in his own thoughts of
repentance ; he is lost for ever to the world. Gradually
the joyous greetings assure him that his old companions
know nothing of his sin, his sorrow, or their causes he is
sympathetically won, his sensitive heart catches the light
and fire of their good-fellowship. Some of us may remember
those masterly moments in MR. LIVING'S acting, when, as
Eugene Aram or the hero of the Bells, he has managed at
moments to forget his own crime and feel almost innocent
and upright in the reflected sympathy and ignorance of
554 "TANNHAUSEK" AND " LOHENGRIN."
those who believed him so ; and is this not true to life ?
Does not a man feel twice guilty when found out ? Is he
not often redeemable before the brand has been put upon
him, but not afterwards? To be accepted as innocent is
sometimes almost as soothing to a broken spirit and a con-
trite heart as confession and absolution ; and do we not all
exercise a sort of absolution, binding and loosing from sin ?
The Landgrave and the merry hunters seem to toss the life
and doings in Venus-berg away from Tannhaussr; they
know nothing of them. For a moment, as he listens to
their free joyous talk, the past seems wiped out. They
remind him of his brilliant victory in song before he dis-
appeared from among them of Princess Elizabeth, who had
acknowledged herself won by his knightly qualities, and
who is ready to welcome him back. At the sound of her
name his whole soul bounds, Venus is effaced, Holy Mary
vanishes, Elizabeth seems now the idol ready to absorb and
satisfy those senses profaned in the Venus-berg, and that
soul so lately given in ascetic fervour to the Invisible and
the Divine.
ACT II.
The joyous prelude to the second act contains, at the
eleventh and following bars, one of those magic
t KG
passages which WAGNER seems able to throw
ELIZABETH. r
in at will. It is the essence of a heart bounding
with joy, and is worked into the accompaniment where
ELIZABETH. 555
Elizabeth greets the minstrel hall, so full to her of joy, and
the memories of Tannhauser's triumph in song.
The great hall of the minstrels in the Wartburg is before
us : a wide prospect of wild woodland and hill is seen from
the spacious open verandah, and the fair Elizabeth enters,
attired in flowing white, her countenance radiant with joy.
In one of those broad and free melodic recitatives so
suitable to that vast amount of thinking aloud which fills
WAGNER'S operas, Elizabeth describes how her heart was
won by the strains of the minstrel knight Tannhauser. To
her presently enter Wolfran and Tannhauser. The shock
is almost too sudden for the maiden Princess, as Tann-
hauser throws himself at her feet; she implores him to
leave her, but in another moment her scruples are over-
come by his passionate entreaties. He seems to yield
himself entirely to this new situation, nor is the spell broken
when Elizabeth asks where he has been and what he has
been doing.
" Far away," he answers, "in a distant land. The veil of
oblivion has forever fallen between yesterday and to-day
everything in the past has vanished ; only one thing remains
painted upon the darkness the glory of your perfection
that I now salute, yet never thought to see again." Eliza-
beth still, with a touch of maidenly reserve, tries in vain to
check her own raptures at his return, but ends in that full
expansive utterance that majestic strain so nobly intense
and pure (such a contrast to the feverish sensuality of the
556 " TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN."
Venus-berg music), in which her noble love finds at once its
expression and solace. Her reticence gives way. She is not
afraid to tell him now all the strange growth of new feelings,
vague longings, her sadness at his absence, her want of
interest in all but him, her broken slumber, her waking
tears, her maddening memories ; and yet throughout she
remains so simple, so pure, so guileless, that Tannhauser
feels, for the first time, what the true love of the pure woman
might be to a man. Satisfying all, yet lifting all into a region
of harmony and delight not enervating but renewing and
ennobling all things, and forming, indeed, tbe soul's missing
link between earth and heaven ! What wonder if in that
moment the magic Venus and the mystic Mary are alike
forgotten. The love duet rolls on impassioned, and yet
strongly cast in an almost Mozartian mould of regularity, in
which strophe and antistropbe are taken up alternately by
the lovers, and whole phrases occur, ending with the perfect
cadence, and repeated without variation as in the most
orthodox Italian scena. "We must recollect that Tannhauser
is not Lohengrin, and still leans more to the recognised form
than any of WAGNER'S later operas. But here I cannot
think that the regularity of form is in the least out of place,
or in conflict with the sense and admirably dramatic finish
of the episode, which will not suffer by comparison with any
predecessor of any school.
At the close of the duet Tannhauser leaves the stage, and
THE LANDGRAVE. 557
the Landgrave finds Elizabeth and bids her prepare for the
reception of the whole court to witness a contest
4o7.
IRE between various bards amongst whom Tann-
' hauser will of course be found. Elizabeth will
have to crown the victor. The pageantry which now
follows, accompanied by the famous assembling march, is
of its kind unequalled in the annals of opera.
The Tournament of Song brings us to perhaps the most
connected suite of melody in all WAGNER'S works. The
458. march, which so largely contributes to the popu-
CESSION!U, ^ ar ^y f this opera, moves on with a rhythm
MAKCH. an( j a richness worthy of the gorgeous display
of pages in mauve, scarlet, white, and purple of ladies
with delicately contrasted court trains of canary-yellow,
blue, dove- grey, with touches of crimson velvet, plumes,
and blaze of jewels ; troops of knights with retainers steel-
clad with shining helmet and falchion. On a throne the
Landgrave takes his seat, with Elizabeth, the Queen of
the Song Tournay, at his right. The bards with their
harps are ranged in front, and seated, Tannhauser amongst
them; and as the rainbow crowd continues to defile slowly
into the spacious hall, and seems likely to fill every part
of it, a joyous chorus takes up the burden of the march,
and pours forth the most exhilarating strains in honour of
the Landgrave and the approaching festival of song not
a touch of foreboding, not a trace of sadness to warn us of
558 " TANNHAUSEE" AND " LOHENGRIN."
the impending catastrophe. The music runs chiefly in the
metallic major key of five sharps, full of exulting joy and
expectant triumph.
We now approach a scene which almost every critic has
found to be a disappointment. The music improvised by
459. the bards is considered dull. It might have been
TnB , less stiff and more melodic. Even Wolfran's
MI N STEEL 8
MUSIC, music, usually, at least, as fine and melodic,
if not more so, than Tannhiiuser's own, is tame and
formal, and so is Walter's, but it seems to us all this
is for a purpose. The splendid assembling melody just
traversed passes into the arid and artificial praise of woman's
love, as a thing too exquisitely exalted to be approached ; or
in fact, to have anything to do with the senses at all. The
conception and the language are both exaggerated and false,
and the arid music betrays its real heartlessness ; it is the
fitting prelude to the over-glowing and wild bound of
sensuous melody which is about to break from Tannhauscr
in vindication of the senses.
The exact casus belli, or triangular conflict, between
Chivalry, the World, and the Church, is here caught and
460. stated for us with quite surprising force. Chivalry
CHIVALRY, j n ij- s religious mood converted every woman into
HIE WORLD,
TOE CHURCH. a VIRGIN MARY. The praises of Love had then
to be sung in this attenuated atmosphere, in which the senses
CHIVALRY, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 559
could not breathe. It was like playing Othello without the
Moor of Venice ; it was the futile attempt to wed the natural
love of the sexes to the Church's ideal of celibate purity,
and the greater the collision with reality and practice, the
stronger, the more conventional became the futile attempt.
Love is the subject proposed to the bards in competition.
Wolfran declares that in the presence of Elizabeth's
beauty his heart dissolves in prayerful dreams. There is
the source of all delight the balm of all grief. He aspires
to worship and die for the lady, but views with horror the
notion of rashly troubling her with any wild desires. Tlrs
little piece of strained humbug, sung by one who probably
does not believe a word of it, is greeted by the crowd,
who certainly do not practise it, with much applause :
" We praise thy noble song ! " Tannhauser now replies ;
at first keeping within bounds, and giving a natural
expression to a legitimate sentiment, he remarks that he,
too, has felt the love of woman, but that, so far from not
troubling her with desire, he conceives that this is, after
all, the root of the matter ; that if a man could not
understand that, he could not know much about love.
For his part, he glories in it, and has no fear or mis-
giving about it.
It is characteristic of Tannbauser that, having spoken
this half truth, he goes no farther; and Walter cuts in
with the other half truth, and utters his platitudes about
virtue, meaning by virtue continence. Ho denounces the
560 "TANNHAUSER" AND " LOHENGRIN."
notion that woman's love ought to have anything to do with
the senses, and thus places his own conception in antagonism
with Tannhauser's.
Such, indeed, was the work and the influence of the
Church of the period. There was no one to step forth and lilt
the two half truths into a higher region of holy and healthy
unity by proclaiming the consecration of sense by affec-
tion and self-restraint, instead of its extinction or corrup-
tion by abstinence and emotional mysticism. No one could
then and there solve the problem which Protestantism has
after all only half solved, retaining a theory but half con-
sistent with its practice, and the consequences to Tannhauser
and Elizabeth were quickly fatal.
If the Venus-berg had done nothing else for Tannhauser,
it had at all events taught him one lesson that he could
461. never forget "THE TREMENDOUS EMPIRE OF THE
TANNHAUSER SENSES Qn hearing them alternately ignored
SPLITS ON
TUB KOCK. an( j trampled upon, he rushes impetuously on the
wings of a strange knowledge into furious opposition, and,
casting all caution to the -winds, breaks though the formal
stupidity of his rivals into an assertion of what is, at least,
true and blameless in itself, that man as man is constituted
specially to love woman as woman. The fine trait of Eliza-
beth's mute instinctive assent to this passionate assertion is
dramatic and touching it is the unconscious purity of a
simple-minded and pure woman assenting to a natural fact.
TANNUAUSEE SPLITS ON THE ROCK. 561
She is soon taught better by the burst of indignant horror
that breaks from the conventional crowd "Silence his
madness ! " Poor Tannhauser, thus bullied by the crowd,
condemned by his friend Wolfrnn, defied to single combat,
loses his head, and utters the exaggerated statement of
what, if it had been left alone, would after all have been
true and fair enough, though not the whole truth about love.
Forced into opposition, and wild with admiration and desire
for Elizabeth, he flies at a bound into the praise of Venus.
The songs of the enchanted mountain are in his ears, and
force themselves in wild snatches through the agitated
orchestra his voice climbs boldly up through the famous
and free melody, in which he praised Venus at the moment
of his departure. Alas ! it is also the knell of that noble
love for Elizabeth, which might have lifted him, but which
he must also shortly abandon for ever; and Tannhauser, the
too bold champion of nature and nature's rights, falls, in
the moment of his perfervid but almost healthy protest, a
victim to the combined incapacity of the Church and
Chivalry to reconcile without emasculating the secular and
religious impulses of our nature.
At the unhappy name of Venus in Tannhauser*s song,
all the accursed and sensual horrors of the Venus-berg are
instantly associated with the minstrel knight. Elizabeth
herself perceives that his position is untenable. The dying
mythology at once hurls Tannhauser from the heaven of
Christian grace. Swords are drawn, and the saintly Eliza-
30
562 "TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN:
beth can only throw herself between her outcast lover
and his would-be murderers! Tannlmuser has now got
thoroughly confused himself. He has been irresistibly im-
pelled to speak an irresistible truth. Yet that truth in that
form was evidently sin deserved punishment cried for
penance and divine pardon. "THE TREMENDOUS EMPIRE
OF THE SENSES," "the strong man armed," begins to confess
a mightier power, "THE IMMENSE SUPREMACY OF THE
SOUL ! " Tannhauser grovels in the dust before an injured
saint, an infuriated mob, an offended God.
I shall not attempt to describe the glowing pages of
chorus in which this complex situation is rendered. Just
as the scene is growing a little too tense and
harrowing, without in the valley is heard a chant
TO ROME!
of young pilgrims. It is the refrain of the great
subject of the overture which binds the whole of the opera
together with a quite magical unity. Before that sweet,
unearthly, familiar strain, a silence falls upon the turbulent
citizens in the great hall. Some repair to the wide open
verandah to see the pilgrims. But to Tannhauser's highly-
wrought mood that chant is as the voice of heaven he,
too, remembers his sudden vow to become a pilgrim and
repair to Rome, where, at the hands of the Holy Father,
after due penance, he may perchance find some dawn of
hope, and be purged from his grievous sin.
So, as he passes swiftly out of the hall to meet the
THE WAYSIDE CRUCIFIX. 563
pilgrims, with a great shout from the assembled throng, " To
Rome I" the second act closes.
ACT III.
It is the wayside crucifix of the first act no longer a
scarcely solemn or pathetic object, lost in the thronging
463. glories of the bright morning woods in spring,
THB but now. in the fall of the year, seen in the
WAYSIDE
CRUCIFIX, autumn twilight, it stands out grim and dark,
and all the scene has grown sad and sombre. Wolfran
advances towards the shrine in search of Elizabeth, who is,
since the departure of Tannhauser, ever to be found praying
there alone, and alone she still would be. She mutely
waves Wolfran aside, thanking him for his friendly sym-
pathy, but relapsing into silent and absorbed prayer. On
the evening wind comes again the floating chant of the
pilgrims, now returning from Rome. The maiden rises,
and listens in startled excitement and intense expectation.
The sweet and majestic chant reaches its climax as the
pilgrims defile before the crucifix. Elizabeth watches each
hooded figure with increasing despair. He is not there.
As the last passes she feels that the bitterness of death
has come and passed with them, and, falling upon her
knees, she prays that her last earthly longings may be
forgiven, and that, white and free from stain, she may be
soon received into the heavenly kingdom, and that her
beloved may also find grace at the last. Once more Wolfran
30 *
564 "TANNHAUSER" AND "LOHENGRIN."
approaches her respectfully, but she needs not his support.
Her step does not falter now; the last touch of human
frailty has left her ; she is sensible to no earthly blandish-
ments, the heavenly bridegroom has claimed her for hia
own, and gentle death will soon lead her into his presence.
As we listen to the exquisite stream of pure melody which
flows once only from the flutes and clarionets as Elizabeth
slowly descends into the valley and disappears towards the
Wartburg, we are irresistibly reminded of Longfellow's
exquisite translation:
O Land! O Land ! for all the broken-hearted
The mildest herald by our fate allotted
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand
To lead us with a gentle hand
Into the land of the great departed,
Into the Silent Land 1
This solemn and peaceful scene is followed by one even
more composed and restful more dignified it could scarcely
be. The terrible sorrow and sublime resignation of Eliza-
beth seem to have weaned Wolfran from all his earthly
desires, and he has ceased almost to regret the love of
Elizabeth for himself, whilst committing her to the care
of Heaven in his incomparable song to the evening star. In
the deepening twilight he prays that, as she so wills it, she
may be taken from a world of pain and sorrow into the
eternal joy, and there, in the trackless fields of light, which
seem to mortals the very homes of the sweet and solemn
starlight, she may find the heavenly and fadeless day.
ENTER TANNHAUSER. 505
We have all this time been unconsciously, and with
consummate dramatic art, prepared for the final climax.
Wolfran checks his harp, as a wayworn man of
464.
ENTER grief approaches; his emaciated form, his wild
TANNHAU8EE. , i i i . . n c '
eyes, his squalor and unsteady gait, tell or im-
mense sufferings and privation, bodily and mental.
Wolfran scarcely recognises Tannhauser in the strange
figure before him.
" Who art thou, solitary one ? "
"Who am I? I know thee well Wolfran, the famed
minstrel."
The touch of bitterness reminding his friend of the arti-
ficial song of love which called forth his own passionate and
disastrous protest, is retaliated with
" Darest thou retrace thy steps unpardoned ? "
" Fear not, my famous bard, I seek not thee ; but I do
seek a man to show me the way."
"What way?"
" The way to the Venus-berg.''
In another instant Tannhauser has passed from bitterness
to confession ; and as Wolfran inquires concerning his
465. pilgrimage, he unburdens himself freely in the
TAN NFEssioN' 8 fll w i n g magnificent oration, which, as a simple
AND DEATH, piece of dramatic declamation, deserves a high
rank. We repeat, that WAGNER'S drama is of its kind
equal to its music; it will repay careful study, and we
566 "TANNHAUSEfi" AND "LOHENGRIN."
cannot forbear giving here a free translation, with con-
necting narrative :
" Listen ! Wolfran, listen ! With a heart more fervently penitent
than ever was heart of pilgrim, I sought the road to Home An angel
ah, woe is me ! had rooted out the pride of sin; but I longed to expiate
that pride in deep abasement. I longed for the grace denied me, in
order to ease the bitterness of that angel's tears for me, a sinner ! The
rough way selected by the most contrite pilgrim seemed all too easy for
me. When he chose the soft grass for his bare feet, I sought the sharp
stones and thorny places for mine. When he slaked his thirst in cool
rivulets, I only drank in the fiery torrent of the sun. Whilst he prayed
to heaven, I shed my life-blood in honour of the Most High. When the
travellers rested in the inn, I was stretched without in ice and wind and
snow. I went like a blind man through the magic plains of Italy. I
did it all because I thought, in dying to the world, by contrition, to
soothe the weeping of my dear angel. I arrived at Eome. I approached
the holy throne. I bowed in prayer and self-abasement on the threshold
of the sanctuary. The morning broke. I heard a chiming of bells
and a chorus of celestial voices ; the whole temple seemed filled with
praise and fervent joy, for plenary indulgence, grace and pardon were
promised to the multitude of penitents. Then I saw him, God's Vicar
upon earth 1 We grovelled in the dust at his feet. I saw him give
pardon to thousands of sinners like me, and they rose up absolved, and
oh, how happy ! And I drew near. My head was bared ; I smote on
my breast ; I said, ' God be merciful to me, even to me : God forgive the
criminal pleasures the crime of the senses, the unsubdued desires.' In
my agony I implored the Holy Father to loose me from the chain of my
sins ; and God knows my soul was pierced through at that moment with
many sorrows. And His Vicar whom I besought made answer thus,
Wolfran, only thus : ' If thou hast shared these criminal joys if thy
heart has been seared with Hell's own fire if thou hast been in the
Venus-berg, there is an end of it : thou art damned for ever. Even as
this dry staff of my crozier will never blossom more, so neither shall
salvation ever blossom for thy soul in hell.' At these words I fell
senseless to the earth as one dead. When I came to myself I was
alone in the vast temple. It was night ; I heard a pilgrim chant of joy
and salvation ; those holy strains filled me with horror. I fled from
that lying hymn ; it fell chill upon my shuddering soul, and seemed to
freeze my heart to ice. Then suddenly, with irresistible violence, I felt
TANNHAUSER' S CONFESSION AND DEATH. 567
myself drawn back to that burning enchantress who had once fillad me
with such unspeakable ecstasy. I return to thee, sweet Venus my
only consoler. I come, I come to thy nightly entrancing pleasure, to thy
glittering court, where all thy beauties smile to greet me, for evermore,
throughout eternity 1 "
" Unhappy man 1 " cries Wolfran, who sees that his friend is under a
ppell and going mad. He tries to stop his growing exaltation as he
invokes Venus.
" Thou hearest, my love, my goddess 1 All men curse me. Guide
thou my steps." The white Venus cloud begins to pass over the stage ;
then comes the wild cry of the sirens, now no longer soft and seductive
as of yore, but almost harsh and strident, like the voices of women
roughened in the bitter life of the barren senses. But Tannhauser's head
is gone.
" Ah 1 heavenly perfume delicious voices ! I am yours ! Come,
come, ye nymphs ; I se*e your joyous forms 1 Crown me with pleasures !
I feel the secret fire in all my veins. I know their soft low light it is
the enchanted mist of the Venus-berg the reign of love ! " At that
moment the vision of Venus, stretched on a bed of roses, appears for an
instant, and Tannhauser is with difficulty restrained by the strong arms
of Wolfran from rushing towards her. For the last time she calls him.
But now songs of the pilgrims are heard in the valley the Venus-berg
was but an enchantment of the senses. Tannhauser listens and gazes
transfixed as a funeral procession draws near. At the sound of prayer
Venus and her crew vanish. The Pagan deity is after all ousted by the
Christian martyr. Elizabeth has prayed for Tannhauser with her dying
breath. Elizabeth has interceded for him on earth : his good angel in
heaven, his victorious saint. Her prayers have been heard. For a
moment only the magical form of Venus had flashed out and
passed another form now fills the heart and brain of the ruined
knight. Elizabeth, lying dead upon her bier, is borne in. As the fair
corpse, strewn with flowers, is set down, the sun breaks out and reveals
a glorious summer day. The pilgrim strain rises once more to heaven,
and Tannhauser, whilst the last dimness clouds his eyes, worn with
disease and suffering, staggers to the bier and falls prostrate in death by
the side of his beloved. A line of young pilgrims bearing a budding
staff, in token of his supreme forgiveness, pass singing :
" Blessed is the pure virgin who has joined the glorious company
of the angels. Blessed is the sinner for whom she has prayed and
won heaven's pardon." And then the united assembly reply, re-echoing
568 "TANNHAUSEB" AND " LOHENGRIN."
the great Pilgrim Chorus, heard first in the overture, and last over the
corpses of the faithful lovers :
" The sinner has received the pardon of heaven ;
He enters into the rest of the blessed ones."
It would be difficult to add to such a close as this. The
parable seems at last fully worked out. The noblest nature,
46G. filled with the genuine experiences of both ex-
PHIL oF PHT tremes f ltf e > see ks f r guidance and counsel at
TANNHAUSER. the hands of Rome, and is rejected. The last
incompetence of Roman Catholicism to deal with life has
been demonstrated, and the reductio ad absurdum of its
method is reached in the Pope's heartless and stupid speech.
Certain sins by Rome's decree are venial, others are mortal ;
roan has made, and man, in the name of God, administers
the scale of punishment which he has made. The whole
system is here exhibited as not alive, but mechanical, and as
a gross outrage upon the rights of the human conscience
arid the spiritual facts of the soul. In Tannhauser this
inhuman management produces despair and worse crime,
when a higher vision is suddenly opened up, and above the
dream of the senses, above the anathema of the Pope
somehow inseparably connected with human love, but with
human love deprived at last of all its lower conditions the
sweet pardon comes home, as it were, on the wings of
angels, and the weary pilgrim, rejected on earth but
received in heaven, passes to rejoin the best beloved in the
peace of God.
THE BLOOD ROYAL OR REAL. 5G9
IX.
LOHENGRIN.
THOSE who see TRANSIT BSTANTIATION, the blood real or the
blood royal, or the " HOLY GRAIL," only through the gross
467. controversial mists of the Reformation, see but
ToTA^on the P rose ' The P etl 7 of the g reat Romanist
REAL. dogma shines out in that cycle of Middle- Age
legends, derived originally from the Welsh bards, into which
the French Trouvares poured the spirit of the new chivalry,
leaving the later Germanic singers to invest their lays with
a spiritual, not to say theological, significance. In the
legend of Parsifal and the Holy Grail, transubstantiation
is no longer seen as the lowest degradation to which a
miracle-monger can subject a pathetic symbol. It rises at
once to the highest level of poetic inspiration. It becomes
the immortal expression of the courage, self-sacrifice, and
purity of the ideal Christian knight.
The story of the sacred quest, and the guardianship of
the " real blood " in its varied developments, sums up
570 LOHENGRIN.
not only the noble impulses of the Middle Ages, but
4 68 some of the most central needs and religious
THE DEPTH passions of human nature. The dramas that
OF THE
SYMBOL AND circle round it are the dramas of our common
ITS LEGEND. .
endeavour, patience, failure, and aspiration. The
Incidents belong to an eternally recurring class. The
Characters remain in their vast outline so many phases of
the human soul. The Moral is the moral of human life as it
repeats itself, essentially the same under all Protean changes
of time and place. It is this representative quality that
has so impressed WAGNER with the force and superiority
of legend or the mythus to present, in a condensed
and simple form, the feelings common to our nature.
There they appear raised, by situations purely ideal, to
their highest degree of intensity. The love of all women
is in Elsa, their jealousy and revenge is in Ortrud ; the
abandon and despair of all noble and blighted natures
in Tannhauser, their nobility and thirst for action in
Lohengrin.
But the reader must now grasp the elements of the
narrative itself, as it rises out of a double legend, into that
peculiar distinctness which the genius of WAGNER has im-
pressed upon his version of the " Sangrail '' and the
" Knight of the Swan."
The cup of the holy blood was that in which our Lord
had consecrated the elements at His last supper. To the
THE STORY OF THE BLOOD. 571
eye of faith that cup had never perished. It existed still ;
469. it ever would exist blessed by the Lord Him-
^OF TB ET self > filled with His blood the ver T visible in ~
BLOOD, carnation of His unspeakable love in its sublime
purity and sacrifice. There, in one glowing symbol, is the
whole parable of the sacramental claim. Literalised by
Rome, it reads thus : " On earth, in a material cup, is the
real presence, dwelling for ever incarnate, with men."
That dogma is the secret of all sacerdotalism. The quest
might belong to the people ; but the guardianship of the
sacred elements, attributed in the myth to the holy knights,
belonged, in reality, to the holy Church, before whose
mystic thrall all Christian knights bowed down.
Joseph of Arimathea had been the first guardian ; but
for the sins of the world, as faith grew cold, the holy cup
had been caught away by angels to heaven, only to be
restored to Titurel, the anointed knight.
Even so does divine truth appear, disappear, and reappear,
as the world is able and worthy to entertain it.
On the summit of a lofty mountain, clothed with luxuriant
forests, somewhere, as the Trouveres supposed, on the con-
fines of India, or the Visigoth mountains of Spain, stood a
glittering pile. There Titurel, with a band of chosen
knights, kept the Holy Grail in the palace of Montsalvat.
Those shining domes of clear agate were lifted with opal
columns. The walls glowed with Oriental jasper; the
shrine was bright with gold and precious stones ; the per-
572 LOHENGRIN.
fume of myrrh and aloes floated through its corridors, and
the fertility of Eden surrounded its precincts with tropical
fruits and flowers.
The imagery of Montsalvat is a strange mixture of Asiatic
mystery and Eastern pomp, wedded to the Catholic shrines
470. of the West. It is a Mont St. Michel in the
MONT9ALVAT tropics. The knights of the Grail embodied
AND
LOHENGRIN, exactly the Church's conception of the warrior's
highest mission. . Her knight was a religious mystic, but
he appeared constantly in the world, and stood like an
impassable barrier between injured innocence and brutal
force. Lohengrin is the shining embodiment of the moral
force, represented by the Church of the Middle Ages,
which enabled the unarmed monk to dash princes and
proud monarchs from their thrones. The knight of the
Sangrail came as the angel of God, with all an angel's
might, and more than an angel's sympathy. He shows
himself a man amongst men, but the mystery of Mont-
salvat was upon him. He could not justify or explain
his actions; he could not reveal his name. The question,
" By what authority doest thou these things ? " will ever be
met by the noblest natures with sealed lips. The " things "
are their own authority. Every spiritual mission justifies
itself. When its prophet stoops to explain, the hour of his
retirement is at hand. Like Lohengrin, his power is at
an end, he must return to Montsalvat, and leave a world
THE SWAN LEGEND AND ELSA. 573
to which so much has been given, and which has proved
itself worthy of so little.
Titurel was succeeded by Parsifal, and Lohengrin was
the son of Parsifal. It is at this point that the Germanic
legend of the Knight of the Swan, so popular at the mouths
of great rivers, weds itself to the wider myth of the Saint
Grail.
An innocent woman of high rank is accused by brutal
conspirators of a high crime. She sees in a dream a knight
471. of superhuman splendour who promises to be her
THE SWAN cnain pi on< In the hour of her trial he appears,
AND ELSA. drawn by a swan in a mystic bark from the open.
sea. He enters the mouth of the river, lands, and conquers.
He weds her on one condition, that she will never ask his
name or his credentials. She promises, but at last cannot
resist the temptation; she urges the fatal question. The
swan reappears, and the knight is borne away from her for
ever.
WAGNER'S opening prelude to Lohengrin resumes the clear
phases of the coming drama. It is a wondrous sound
epitome, arousing the emotions appropriate to
LOHENGRIN the subtle depth of each phase, and shaking the
soul of the listener with a certain keen hunger
of expectant curiosity. It is like one of those crystal
globes in BURNE JONES'S masterpiece, The Days of Creation.
574 LOHENGRIN.
The essence of the day to be born is there, as the essence of
Lohengrin is in the mystic prelude.
But more various and suggestive is the musical language
of pure emotion than any image or painted symbols of
crystal globes and angels, for the musical strain provides
the single emotion in its fulness and indivisibility, which
fires a whole set of symbols, and animates a whole series of
incidents.
You may state Lohengrin as a STORY, as a PHILOSOPHICAL
CONCEPTION, as a SYMBOL, or as a pure METAPHYSICAL IDEA,
,_ and music shall seize and inspire each state-
THK CON- ment. As a STORY, it is the knight coming
CEPTION OF
4 ix>HKXGRiN"froTn the remote and mystic shrine of Mont-
salvat to the banks of the Scheldt to rescue a
forlorn maiden, entering into the din and turmoil of war
and human passion, and at last retiring to the inviolable
sanctuary.
As a PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTION, it sums up the two poles
of human nature the passion for contemplation, and the
passion for action. In the Middle Ages, the monastic soli-
tude, with its visions and its mysteries, stood for one ;
chivalry, with its knights -err ant and its bloody wars and
adventures, stood for the other ; and in the legends of the
Sangrail the two are united, but the conception is a
representative one, and eternally, philosophically true to
human nature. Man dreams and aspires; he seeks isola-
THE CONCEPTION OF LOHENGEIN ANALYSED. 5?5
tion be places leagues of ocean s continents, impenetrable
forests, between his soul and tbe work-a-day world. He
ascends bis boly mountain, bis Montsalvat, and dwells in its
resplendent halls, on the very confines between heaven and
earth. Still, even there he seeks for confraternity in his
isolation. There are with him others, Titurel, Parsifal, the
knights of the holy quest, of tbe San Grail, of the blood
which is the life thereof. But to what end this science of
contemplation ? to what end this heart alternately refrained
and expanded, these muscles so firmly knit, these limbs so
proudly clad in shining mail, this bright sword lying idle in
its scabbard ? Made strong and holy, for what but for
action? Prepared, but not made perfect, except through
suffering. The return of the holy knight to the struggles of
the world is at once the recognition of the spiritual force
embodied by the Church, and the condemnation of the
monastic ideal of solitude and prayer. The larger moral
missed by the Church is caught by the popular myth. The
discipline of life is not apart from human love, however
shining may be the summits of Montsalvat.
The training of the heart must lie in the full expansion of
love. Lohengrin loves Elsa.
The training of the hand must be in knightly deeds
done amongst men. Lohengrin slays the oppressor.
In the midst of glory come pain and separation, yet the
experience and trial have both been needful ; and though
the latest note be one of sorrow, yet will the white swan,
576 LOHENGRIN.
Death, lead the good knight safely through the rolling
waters to his rest.
As a SYMBOL, the descent of the mystic knight, the
glimpse of his supernal graces vouchsafed to earth, and
his withdrawal to the mysterious region, is all imaged by
the vision of the holy cup borne of angels, which to the
expectant saint comes from out the remote distance
" Rose-red, with beatings in it as if alive, till all the white
walls of the cell are dyed with rosy colours leaping on
the wall, and then . . . the Grail pass'd." Tennyson.
As a pure METAPHYSICAL idea, Lohengrin stands for the
dawn of sensibility ; as when one awakes after long sleep,
and, slowly recovering consciousness, begins to feel life in
all one's limbs, and to be keenly conscious of the sun, and
flowers, and of food, and wine all the activities and stimu-
lants of life. Then, after a climax of consciousness to pain
or to pleasure has been reached, the slow returning of sen-
sibility into the realm of unconscious sleep. Life in the
work-a-day world has been taken away, and the white swan
of sleep has borne the weary one back to the dreamland of
Montsalvat.
And now let us come upon the Prelude, and see how
it closes with Lohengrin under one and all
474.
ANALYSIS or of these aspects how it kindles through music
DE ' the one and indivisible tide of emotion that
flows through the series of dramatic, philosophical,
ANALYSIS OF PRELUDE.
symbolical, or metaphysical conceptions, which I have
referred to.
And here, if not before, our powers of description may
well fail. The orchestra alone can take their place. But
who has not heard, in the shrill breathing of the opening
violins and flutes,
The slender sound,
As from a distance beyond distance,
. . . O ! never harp was born,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came.
How it remains for long in the upper air, as loth to leave
the shining heights of Montsalvat, then steals cautiously
down to parley with some earthlier whispers. Like Briinn-
hilde, the Walkiire stooping from Walhalla to listen to the
plaint of human lovers, even so is the high sound drawn to
earth. The warm tints of the sunny genial world, with all
its lights and shadows, " all the wealth, and all the woe,"
begin to glow and mantle in the richly-swelling tide of
sound. One by one all the instruments of the orchestra are
gathered in as the deeper notes of the descending scale
climb downwards, and the varied voices of pain and fore-
bodings and excess of tender love are woven into the mighty
fabric of suspended harmonies, until with a vast shattering of
silver cymbals the climax is reached and repeated, and then
the little far-off voice of bitterness like a heart-pang shoots
through the rich and laden atmosphere of changing and
dissolving sound, and we suddenly are conscious that the
37
578 LOHENGRIN.
power of the spell is waning, the satisfaction of a finished
work sinks in upon the soul, lately the scene of such stormy
and conflicting emotions, and we heave a long and peaceful
high as the phrase ends with a perfect major close. But at
that moment, like Elsa awaking from her deadly swoon, we
are aware that the shining knight is gone. The music is
caught up higher and higher, further and further " the
slender sound " from " a distance beyond distance " recedes
as it came, and as the ear clings to the last faint ethereal
whisper in the upper air, we perceive that the knight of the
Sangrail has passed.
ACT I.
As the last whisper of shrill violin harmonics dies away,
the curtain rises upon the grassy lowlands in the neigh-
bourhood of Antwerp. The river winds away
47>.
NY TUB into the distance, broadening out to the dim
and hazy sea. The whole scene lies glowing
and palpitating in the splendour of a summer day, and
Henry, the King of Germany, seated under a spreading
oak, holds his court with military pomp. The fore-
ground is crowded with knights and retainers in splendid
costumes.
A blast of trumpets sounds, and a herald steps forward,
and in a musical phrase closely imitative of the natural
ENTER THE KING. 579
inflection of a voice bawling out loud, proclaims his sove-
reign's will, which is, that an army should at once
EOTEB THE muster to serve the king in his foreign wars. The
enthusiasm of the people is checked by the very
business-like way in which the King rises, and in dignified
Wagnerian recitative reminds his loyal people of their inter-
nal discords, and especially of their immediate disagreement
about the Overlordship of Brabant itself, and he then calls
upon the leading noble, Frederic Count of Telramund, to show
the cause. This ambitious man, who has married Ortrud, a
lineal princess of Friesland, and who aspires to the vacant
throne of Brabant, then steps forth and tells how that the
late ruling Duke made him guardian of his two children,
Gottfried and Elsa ; how that Elsa, who should have been
his own bride, conspired with some unknown lover, doubt-
less eager for the crown, and treacherously in a wood made
away with her brother, Gottfried ; how he, the Count, then
married Ortrud and claimed the throne for himself. He
then proceeds to arraign Elsa for the murder of her brother,
and here the legend of the swan is slipped in.
The discerning reader may as well know that Gottfried
has been turned into a swan by the magic arts of the wicked
Frisian Princess Ortrud, who aspires with Frederic Telra-
mund to the vacant throne. A thrill of horror runs through
the assembly on learning the charge now made against Elsa,
and a highly expressive cry bursts forth from the people.
The first crisis is steadily worked up with all the dramatic
37 *
580 LOHENGRIN.
art and patient analysis of the situation so characteristic
of WAGNER'S genius. Nothing is forgotten. The King
bids the Count consider the awful nature of the charge.
The Count grows more violent in his assertions, and begins
to impute all those base motives to Elsa which are indeed
his own.
The King reproves him judicially, and recalls the contro-
versy to facts with " Summon the maid ! " The herald now
proclaims a judicial trial, and the royal will is
477> emphasized by a great unsheathing and flourishing
KXTKIi JSLSA*
of swords. In answer to the general summons,
Elsa, in pure white, accompanied by her maidens, is seen
approaching. The crowd parts as she slowly moves like
one in a trance not seeing or hearing. A cry of subdued
admiration and sympathy greets her, and is immediately
followed by the first Elsa motive in the orchestra that
strain of pure and pathetic melody, inseparably connected
with her innocence and her vision of Lohengrin. The
crowd are half won over.
" How like an angel of light ! He who accuses her must
surely prove her guilt. 1 ' She stands face to face with the
King. In answer to his questions she inclines her head,
but speaks not when asked to confess her guilt. With a
weary, dreamy sigh come the words " Alas ! my poor
brother ! " The King and the people are staggered, when
Elsa raises her head, and in a strain that must ever thrill
ENTER ELSA. 581
all hearers into rapt silence, she relates, with eyes dreamy
and fixed, how, an unprotected orphan, she has often prayed
for a heavenly guide. %
The crowd stare wonderingly.
The King, a little impatient, hreaks in with " Elsa,
defend thyself ! '' Now from the orchestra softly streams
the opening subject of the prelude, the dream music of
Montsalvat. Thither indeed at such a moment has the
spirit of Elsa been caught away. Her face begins to glow ;
as she is lifted up to the celestial contemplation, she
describes the form of the shining knight who appeared in
answer to the orphan's prayer, and ends with the pas-
sionate apostrophe, " My guardian, my defender, thou shalt
be my champion ! "
Her prayer is echoed by the excited multitude. The
King alone resists the spell. Instantly the rival Count
seizes his occasion to declare that she calls for her para-
mour, and that he is prepared to meet him in single combat.
Not a man steps forth. The wavering crowd are evidently
struck by his determined attitude.
The King expresses confidence in the Count, and things
are beginning to look black indeed for Elsa.
Still the King will not judge Heaven alone must
decide Telramund is pledged to fight. All eyes turn to
Elsa. She accepts the challenge, and is asked for her
champion. She grows dreamy, speaks again of her knight,
and offers herself up to him in a kind of ecstatic prayer. Her
82 LOHENGRIN.
spell is once more on the inconstant crowd. " A noble
prize ! who will the victor be ? "
The solemn moment has arrived. The herald again steps
forth, and with declamatory accents, simulating the natural
- inflections, he calls for Elsa's champion. There
LL HE is no answer, and the dropping notes of the
trombone and violoncello pizzicato admirably
render the pause of suspense. Elsa passes slowly from
tranquillity to agitation. The crowd begins to side against
her, the hostile court exults. Elsa turns to the King, and
implores for one more summons. Again the trumpets
sound, again the herald cries ; again an ominous silence,
broken only by one soft trumpet note, a still softer horn
note, then five taps, like fate, on the kettle-drum, suspended
by rests. " The Heavens are silent, she is doomed," cries
the mob, and Elsa sinks on her knees in passionate prayer
a prayer of exquisite distress, which is soon changed as her
vision brightens to a growing ecstasy.
" O Lord, send my knight !
Send him again stainless and white.
Let me behold that form of light 1 "
The tremulous violins sustain and suspend the stretched
470. emotion, whilst a strange shudder passes through
TTIE SWAN ^ crowd. A group on the banks are now look-
AXD THE
KNIGHT. i n or seaward. Something is stealing out of ths
hazy distance. Little cries arise, then shouts, and, " Look !
THE SWAN AND THE KNIGHT. S83
a marvel ! '' then a confused roar of voices, and a rush
and mingling together of the gaily-decked multitude. " A
swan ! a fair swan ! yonder a bark the swan drawing tho
bark. A knight, a full fair knight, shining in resplendent
armour. A helm of light see how he gains the shore ! "
He comes, and from the crowd behind who cannot see
"What? where? there! look! who is it?" Such are the
exclamations of this eight-part chorus, which renders better
than any description, the exciting and rapturous scene which
now unfolds itself, as the crowd parts to right and left, and
the knight, the unknown knight, who is Lohengrin, steps
from the swan-drawn bark, clad in shining silver mail from
top to toe, and stands for a moment waving his adieu to the
swan.
In that strain of unaccompanied melody, so famous, and
so clear in its lofty, fearless simplicity, he announces his
mission to the King, and in another moment Elsa is in his
arms.
The first development of the parable is reached. Lohen-
grin has found the earthly counterpart to his mystic passion
for the Holy Grail. He has heard from the lips of his
queen those glowing words, "My hope! my solace, my
hero, I am thine ! " but in an instant, before surrendering
himself, he guards his sacred identity with, "Never, as
thou dost love me, ask from whence I came never ask
my race or name."
584 LOHENGRIN.
With these words, the first ominous notes of pain, which
recur again in the mouth of Elsa's rival, Ortrud, and which
480 are henceforth identified with the fatal question,
and weighted with the woe of the final catastrophe,
ALIQUID. are heard ; and the phrase is followed by that
other famous recurring strain, expressive of the weird
mystery that envelops Lohengrin, and for ever separates
him from his earthly surroundings, even at the moment
when he seems most immersed in and identified with all
human interests of love and war ; and the warning is twice
repeated.
In a transport of confiding love, Elsa promises every-
thing. Then Lohengrin clasps her to his breast, with the
simple but intense words wedded to the simplest, clearest,
musical phrase, " Elsa, I love thee." The snatch of six
part-chorus that now greets the pair, "O, sweet enchant-
ment, wondrous love \" is a piece of rich and satisfying
harmony, in which the leading melody, full of repose,
rings high above the glowing chords and modulations upon
which it is floated out.
But the champions already stand face to face, and whilst
the ground is being measured out, bandy words of mutual
defiance. Then the herald once more proclaims
481 ' aloud the fight. The two rivals commit their
THE DUEL.
cause to heaven. The King, for the first time,
becomes thoroughly melodic and lyrical in his prayer, which
THE CLOSE OF ACT I. 585
is taken up by the whole assembly, in a full and over-
powering chorus of considerable length, at the close of
which, to the rattle of violins, the King draws his sword as
the signal to begin.
Trumpets on the stage blare forth, and the combatants
rush together. The indescribable close of the first act
must be left to the reader's imagination or memory. Fre-
deric falls before Lohengrin's sword, his life is magnani-
mously spared. Elsa's ecstasy, the intense passion of which
silences the turbulent burst of chorus, surpasses in its
fervour the famous " Robert, toi que j'aime ! "' itself a
masterpiece of dramatic passion.
Nothing finer of its kind has ever been conceived than
the phrase beginning on G above the line, " Joy, oh joy ! "
taking a new flight on A, yearning on that eleva-
THE CLOSE tion for a still more intense expression ; and at
last scaling to the upper B in that bounding
strain, at the close of which Elsa sinks exhausted upon
Lohengrin's breast.
A lesser artist would have here brought down the curtain,
but the climax is rounded off superbly with ten more pages
of chorus in eleven parts, in which the rage and astonish-
ment of Count Frederic and Ortrud his consort, the thanks-
giving of the king, the triumph of the knight, the ecstasy
of Elsa, and the bewildered joy of the multitude, take up
the heroine's strain, and work out her touching and melodic
536 LOHENGRIN.
phrases in a symphonic form, and with a wealth of orchestra-
tion worthy of the finest parts of Fldelio. At the close of
which Frederic falls iii despair at the feet of his wife Ortrud,
Lohengrin is carried off in procession on his own shield,
and Elsa is raised high on the King's, overspread with
gorgeous mantles, whilst the curtain descends amid the
universal rejoicings.
ACT IT.
The moon is slowly rising over the square of the great
Minster of Antwerp. On one side of it is ranged the palace
brightly lighted up, and the sound of dance
483.
ORTRUD AND music mingles incongruously with the lonely
D ' gloom of the two dark figures cowering on the
steps in front of the cathedral portals.
In the long and stormy duet 'which follows, Frederic up-
braids Ortrud with having goaded him on falsely to accuse
Elsa of her brother's murder. He had weakly relied on his
wife's lie and her magic to slay his rival. Now he had
been thrown in the ordeal combat, and both were disgraced.
His very sword was gone ; he longs for it to slay his now
detested consort. He raves like a second weak blubbering
Ahab before a second wily and indomitable Jezebel. The
woman now shows her reserve force ; she tells the disgraced
noble he has been d-efeated by magic. Had he but grazed
the body of the unknown knight he might still have been
ELSA SINGS. C87
victor, but now he could only paralyze his power by extort-
ing the secret of his name. But one could accomplish this
Elsa, who on the morrow was to become a bride. There
was not a moment to be lost. See, the music has died in
the castle-halls, the revellers are gone.
Elsa will come forth presently on her balcony, to drink
deep after the heated ball-room from the cool cisterns of
the night. The stars are out. Hush ! yonder
A QJ.
casement opens. The Count is hurried off by
ELSA SINGS.
his wife, who sits down on the steps with face
buried apparently in her hands, but in reality with an eye
as of a cat fixed on its prey, watching every motion of the
snow-white figure slowly emerging, and now leaning out
upon the balcony towards her.
Soft summer night, and stars that seem to beat in time
to yonder palpitating heart ! Sweet wandering airs that
fan the hot cheeks and happy restless spirit of maiden Elsa,
who in solitude, balmy and silent, seeks to possess herself,
and sound with full and satisfying thought the depths of
her own happiness ! In her most entrancing song, that
floats out into the listening night, she seems to sound and
sound, and to find those depths fathomless.
The short orchestral prelude recasts, in a meditative and
subdued mould, some of the elements of the last triumphal
chorus, and then, clear through the balmy midsummer
moonlight, steals forth that enchanting song, in its opening
588 LOHENGRIN.
phrases so strikingly like " Home, sweet home," but quite
etherealised out of all resemblance to it as it proceeds.
But the snake in the dark now rears its slanderous head.
Ortrud draws out of the deep shadow with a pathetic wail
" Elsa ! '' The startled girl is soon melted to
485.
LATET pity for her prostrate rival, who craftily abases
herself and pleads for her husband, whom she
represents as deeply penitent, and eager for the royal favour
of his happy rival.
Elsa's own spirit, longing to overflow and impart happi-
ness to all, is played upon by the sorceress, who is presently
received with open arms by the trusting bride ; and few can
forget MADEMOISELLE TITIENS' magnificent burst of insult-
ing malice and vengeance (during Elsa's momentary with-
drawal) in which Ortrud summons the infernal gods whom
she worships to accomplish her dark designs for the ruin of
Elsa's love. Elsa finishes by inviting her two rivals to array
themselves in splendid apparel, and grace with her the
nuptial festival on the morrow. The gratitude of Ortrud
now offers a return in the shape of good counsel. She art-
lessly advises Elsa not to marry a man she knows nothing
of, but to extort the confession of his name at least ; and the
phrase of exalted passion in which Elsa naively answers the
designing woman, that she cannot know what true love is if
she can so suggest a doubt, is one of matchless freshness
and full of tidal joy.
THE MOANING COMES. 589
But the poison has nevertheless been instilled, and the
pair withdraw into the castle together. Frederic now creeps
from his recess, where he has listened to all,
TUB MORNING utters a f ew strains of malignant joy. The day
breaks; the long drawn-out and magnificent
crisis of the second act is at hand.
With the bright glancing of the morning light upon the
cathedral, palace, and market-place, the soul passes into a
new phase of emotions. Now we can see the meaning of the
long, gloomy duet between Frederic and Ortrud, succeeded
by the finely-contrasted night-scene of Elsa's love and
Ortrud's treachery. The whole atmosphere of the night,
laden with oppressive and exhausting passion, confined to
three individuals, has prepared us for the fresh life of the
day and the busy stir and tumult of feelings, in which the
individual is at first lost in the crowded scene, and then steps
forth into prominence, but still to carry on his action no
longer in private, but coram populo.
The early dawn broadens to the cheery sound of horns
answering each other, call for call, from the distant turrets
of the city. Troops of men and girls visit the town Well, and
pass to and fro in the market-place.
And now the castle gates open, forth come the royal
trumpeters and blow the herald blast, summoning from right
and left the nobles and retainers, to prepare for the presence
of the King and the marriage festivities of Elsa and her
knight.
590 LOUENGEIN.
The straightforward chorus in which the gay groups
greet each other is exhilarating, and seems to banish the
last shade of night from the stage and of gloom from the
heart.
The royal herald here steps forth, and with a flourish of
trumpets announces to the hushed crowd that Frederic
Telramund is an outlaw and traitor, and the
487.
THE CROWD people, like parrots, break out gaily into free
8 ' cursing. Lohengrin is then proclaimed Guardian
of Brabant, and the pliable chorus assents vociferously.
The third message summons the nobles and retainers to
the espousals of Elsa and the knight, which, of course,
forms the subject for a longer chorus, in which the nobles
profess themselves willing to follow the new Overlord to
victory against the King's foes in a distant land. Observe
the fine proportion of the herald's tripartite message, and the
corresponding bursts of chorus which greet it. Again,
the perfection of form is instinctively reached. What
follows shows that acquaintance with popular movements,
and that deep insight into political instincts of crowds
subjected to the manipulation of agitators, of which
WAGNER had some bracing experience when he himself
appeared as a party orator during the rise of Saxony and the
agitation of 1848.
There are always two sides to a question, and in every
political movement always a reactionary minority.
CONSPIRACY. ENTER PAGES. 591
No sooner has the boisterously loyal chorus ceased, than
a movement is apparent in the crowd, and four nobles
detach themselves from the herd. " The land we
are to quit ! " cries one. " Against a foe who
COXSMRACY.
never threatened us/' replies a second. " Such
rashness will bring sorrow/' says a third. " But who will
dare oppose the King?" asks the fourth. "I!" cries
Frederic of Telramund, stepping from his hiding-place.
He has indeed struck while the iron is hot, and, with the
rapid instinct of self-preservation, he levels a blow at his
victim, declares that all have been duped by magical arts,
and that the unknown knight must be unmasked.
The crowd is but half won, but the poison of suspicion
has been dropped, and the rapid kaleidoscope has already
shifted, as the conspirators mingle in the gathcr-
ENTER ing crowd of nobly-clad courtiers, and four royal
pages appear in scarlet, yellow, and blue satin,
and from their fresh girl voices a very song of the morning,
" Make way ! make way ! " falls like dew and sunshine. It
is one of those matchless fragments of clear and effec-
tively simple harmony of which WAGNER seems to have
an inexhaustible store. The cry from the Syrens in Tann-
hciuser, and the parting salute of the chorus in the bridal
chamber, are but two of a hundred other examples. The
glittering crowd now parts; splendid pages, in all the
colours of the rainbow, make their way some to the open
592 LOHENGRIN.
Minster door, others to range themselves on either side up
the flight of steps. On the Palace balcony appear groups of
beautiful children, and gaily-dressed women and cavaliers,
and instalments of the royal procession are seen slowly
winding from terrace to terrace, and approaching until the
last flight of marble stairs lands them in the great square,
which parts the procession from the Minster.
The stately music heralds in the appearance of Elsa;
there is a long-drawn-out expectant sigh from the crowd,
" She comes ! with blushes glowing, on holy
490> thoughts intent : " and Elsa, robed in bridal
TBEACUEKT.
white, stands revealed to the whole assembly
on the top of the Palace stairs. Then, slowly preceded
and followed by her maidens, she advances in the pro-
cession, and crosses the market-place, whilst a rapturous
chorus rends the air with, " Hail ! Elsa of Brabant/' As
the strain culminates in one long shout, Elsa's foot is on
the second step of the Minster stairs, when the treacherous
Ortrud, who has formed one of her train, rushes forward,
and pushes Elsa aside with " Stand back, Elsa ! no longer
will I follow you like a slave; the precedence is mine,
you shall yet bow to me ! " The tumult following these
words, and the fierce colloquy between Elsa and Ortrud
threaten to end in dire confusion ; but WAGNER has the
stages of development firmly in hand, and the transitions of
incident and emotion never lose definite purpose and clear-
TREACHERY. 593
ness. But one thing has again to be done. Doubt, sus-
picion of the unknown knight, has to be sown amongst the
people, and matured in the heart of Elsa. In presence of
such a rabid falcon as Ortrud, the poor white dove is only
too powerless. The sorceress hurls at her, and at the
assembled crowd, the charge of magic against the mysterious
knight, insists upon his name, and with every taunt harps
upon a question to which Elsa can give no answer, until the
effect of her words, supported by the disaffected minority
gathering round Frederic Telramund, is also seen in the
maiden's passionate assertions of her utter trust, in the
midst of her growing agitation. Suddenly the King and
Lohengrin are announced, and the orderly progression of
the drama is displayed by Frederic now stepping forth to
confront his rival, as Ortrud had dealt with hers. It is the
occasion for a new emphasis of the harrowing question,
" Who is the knight " to whom the fortunes of Brabant, and
Elsa, the jewel of Brabant, have been handed over in a
moment of popular excitement ? Let him stand forth and
declare himself. " Yon shining knight, who has defied my
sword, I here accuse of sorcery vile ! " cries Frederic. At
first the King is for passing the charge by, but Frederic's
vehemence begins to win the crowd. The mystic knight is
forced at last to declare that Elsa alone can put that question
to him, that he will answer no other.
Fatal trust in the reticence of a woman ! Had she not
38
591 LOHENGRIN-.
sworn never to ask? Could he not trust her? Heavenly
trust in human frailty, how often hast thou been
491
POISON deceived ! But a new stage has been reached.
INSTILLED. Elga ]iag heard; she has k een s h a k en< The
crowd expect to know. The poison is working in the blood
of the bride. Frederic and Ortrud no longer care to inter-
rupt the nuptial procession ; their work is done. The organ
peals forth from the open portals, and dies away in one long
swell. All seems fair again. Elsa falls in tears on the
breast of her knight. Ortrud stands aside with menacing
arm uplifted; but in the tears of Elsa, and in the trium-
phant attitude of Ortrud, we read the doom of the injured
bride, and the brief yet bitter ascendancy of the perfidious
witch, so swiftly developed in the third and last Part.
ACT III.
There is but one more development in the character of
Elsa, and the lines of the plot are complete. It is the
struggle between her love and her curiosity, in
INTRODUCTION which the last wins, and the denouement passes
to a terribly rapid close. That struggle is the
centre and pith of the last act.
The famous introduction is instinct with the higher moral
of the whole, which is inferred rather than felt out in
the closing incidents of the drama. The music is all joyous
stir, and knightly, chivalrous vigour. It is the shout of a
THE BRIDAL CHORUS, 595
multitude, it is the triumph of Lohengrin in his accomplished
mission, in which his personal feelings and his fateful love
are all put aside, and the larger aspect of his public work,
in delivering Elsa, breaking up the malign enchantment,
and restoring the little Prince Gottfried to his adoring
people, is alone entertained.
In this stirring prelude, Lohengrin, not the lover, not the
rival, but only the victorious knight of the Sangrail, seems
to pass for the last time, enveloped in mystic glory before
us, amidst the acclamations of the people ; and the martial
strains ring on, long after the hero has retired into the
sacred rest of Montsalvat. But the joys and the sorrows of
earth love must first be traversed.
The empty bridal chamber is before us. On one side, a
wide oriel window, through which we may see the summer
moonlight, setting full upon the broad waters of
4 Jo.
THE BRIDAL the Scheldt. Voices fresh voices young girls.
CHORUS. mi i
Ihe doors open.
They enter as pages bearing torches. The King, nobles,
and ladies, conduct Elsa and her knight to their bridal room.
No more graceful scene, no more delicate and enchanting
music, has ever been devised than the famous " Faithful and
true ! we lead you to where love triumphant shall crown
you with joy ." Eight ladies now take up a new and equally
enchanting strain, which is in fact a poetical version of
whom God hath joined together"; and throughout the
38 *
596 LOHENGRIN.
astonishing scene that follows, there reigns that singular
elevation which must for ever separate this great love duet
from such sensuous emanations as GOUNOD'S duet between
Faust and Marguerite, or even WAGNER'S own delineation
of passion in Tristan and Isolde.
Here everything is rare and sublimated.
The breath of a divine fervour lifts the knightly love
of Lohengrin into an atmosphere of resplendent purity.
As the last notes of bridal music die away, and the doors
are closed upon the happy pair, that long-drawn-out duet
begins, which in dramatic force alone will bear comparison
with the finest bursts in Romeo and Juliet.
Merely as a psychological study it is worth dwelling
upon, although it is not easy to give any idea of the truth
and power of the music. The happy strain is o'er, " We
are alone, who never were alone since first we met." The
first notes of Lohengrin take us from the joyous conven-
tional view of the bridal chorus, into the immediate privacy
of the lovers.
With the closing of the doors the atmosphere is shifted
instantly. The melody is long drawn out, reposeful, and
intime. He longs to know from her own lips
whether she is happy. It is the old, imperious
VIS INTIXE. "rJ
instinct, which is eager to seek a confirmation of
its desire from a kindred soul.
It must hear from other lips what it already knows, and
ONLY A WOMAN! 597
be thus twice blessed. " Happy ! " cries Elsa, " that word
ray transport cannot measure ! "
He is satisfied. She has given him back his feelings.
He reminds her of the mystic love which brought him from
the distance in her hour of need. She answers with a
glimpse of her own vision. Now that she holds in her arms
its realisation, it lends eloquence to her lips. She will be
melted by his eyes, and flow about him like a river; she
will be the little flower that kisses his feet as they move in
the fresh grass.
She will live so. No, she will die, if in dying her life can
become more his own. Is this love ? is it all that love can
say ? No, it might still breathe his dear name. " Must it
be for ever concealed from me ? "
With the beseeching yet warning fifth from E to A
" Elsa ! " Lohengrin would check her miserable rashness.
But the woman is unbalanced by the intensity of her emo-
tions, and with clinging urgency rushes on heedless. " How
sweetly sounds my name from thy dear lips ! but thy dear
name shall never sound from mine ! "
Will the spell never be broken ? Will she never know ?
Again her lover would check her " Oh, my sweet wife ! '*
notes full of a sudden heart-pang. She heeds
4 t/O.
ONLY A them not. She presses eagerly her face close to
him, and clasps him in her arms, pleading im-
petuously, " Now, when none are near, whisper the word
598 LOHENGRIN.
once softly ; I only shall hear it." Lohengrin rises. His
pain is too great, he needs diversion for his thoughts, he
will put this dreadful moment aside. He lifts her from the
couch ; they are both standing by the oriel casement. He
pushes it wide open. The moonlight streams in, and the
soft air is full of strange and mystic perfumes. The air
seems to grow chill. The music of shrill triplets on flutes
and clarionets is here marvellous. The lovers stand between
the moonlight and the dawn.
Alas ! too true. The dream of love draws to its pallid
awakening. For a moment they stand and inhale the
odorous gales, which come streaming towards
406.
WHAT'S ix the knight as from the aromatic shrine of Mont-
sal vat. Thoughts of its glory rush into his
mind; his ecstatic nature wakes beneath them; bespeaks
what seem to her wild words of magic and mystery. A
vague distrust mingles with her passion. His secret is
fraught perchance with danger; he is not safe in her
embrace; others may have mystic claims over him. Yet
for a moment she is folded in a long embrace. Oh !
could her folly all be forgotten ! But no ! the very inner
woman comes out piteously with, " Let me let me know ! "
The first stern notes from the knight are her answer : " No
more of this, Elsa ! " But she is quite wild, weakly wild.
" Tell, oh tell me thy race, name, all ! I will never, never,
tell it to anyone." It is a situation that must so often have
AN EXCEEDING BITTER CRY. 599
repeated itself in the sad aimals of humanity the eager
insatiable curiosity of woman, wrecking her own love and
the love of one dearer to her than life itself. But the
deepest side of the ideal knight is now fairly aroused. The
sense of his duty, and the honour of the Sangrail ! Before
that consummate glory even the fire of love grows pale,
nnd he tells his bride that wavering faith shall never be
forgiven.
In a moment the unhappy Elsa is melted and contrite.
She falls back on the simple human side of her love, and
calls him to her arms, the only spell she knows.
AN EXCEEDING But Lohengrin now proclaims that he belongs
to a higher world, that none can add or take
from the sacred order which owns his allegiance : that the
bliss from whence he comes and whither he must return is
ineffable, supernal.
Alas ! Help ! Heaven !
A cry of bitter jealous passion breaks from the frantic
woman. She now feels, by a quick and sure instinct, that
she is going to be left. One more typical situation. The
plaint of all forsaken hearts is resumed in that despairing
cry of Elsa ; the time for asking his name seems past. The
sense of overhanging doom is upon her. A vague terror
shakes her whole frame. Is it the prophetic sense of the
murderers that are even now with Frederic of Telramund,
close outside her bedchamber ? " Hark ! there are sounds ! "
GOO LOHENGRIN.
the knight's quick ear has heard, but she is gazing vacantly
from the casement. Another terror now seizes her. Over
the flooded river brightening to the dawn she catches sight
of the ominous swan that brought her champion.
" The swan ! the swan ! " she screams like one possessed.
" As when I first beheld his pinions shine he comes for
thce ! " In her mad despair, trust, caution, even love itself,
seems to give way to the impetuous fury of a wild creature ;
and this last consummate touch of human nature is simply
overpowering on the stage. In the gentlest and tcnderest
o women, when pushed to extremity, there is often the
imperious ferocity of a tiger at bay. Like a vindictive fury
she flies at him with, "Declare thy race and name! Declare
thy name thy name ! Where is thy home ? ''
At that moment the door is burst open, the murderers
rush in. Elsa has just strength and presence of mind left,
as the sudden revulsion of feeling takes posses-
4D8 ' sion of her relaxing limbs, to hand her lover his
MURDER I
sword before she swoons away. With a touch
of that enchanted blade, Lohengrin slays Frederic Telra-
mund, then lifts the fainting form of Elsa on to the bed.
Nobles and servitors enter. The knight, lost for ever to
his love, with sad and solemn calmness bids them lead
Elsa to the King, and promises there, in presence of all, to
declare his name and home.
From the orchestra are heard the well-known notes of
THE KING IN COUNCIL. G01
doom and mystery associated with Lohengrin's warning
voice and Ortrud's spell.
The body of Frederic is removed, and a large curtain
falls. The mise-en-scene of the prolonged duet being very
shallow, a mere background against the foot-
4 %;/
THE KING lights, the splendid vision of the broad prairie
u and banks of the winding Scheldt, with the
hazy distant sea, is all ready, as in the opening act, to be
revealed as the scene of the final situation, and almost
immediately the curtain is withdrawn, and the opening
pageant is again before us. The King is with his nobles
under the spreading oak, the full morning sun is throb-
bing over river and mead. The assembling drum and
trumpet music, of quite a perfunctory character, goes on
for several pages, whilst the crowd distributes itself. It
is an immense relief, and in its indifference rests the mind,
and prepares us quite after the Shaksperean method for
the exciting denouement close at hand.
Mutual compliments now pass between the war-like
monarch and his people. It appears that all are now pre-
pared to join in his foreign war for the sake of Germany,
and he is thanking them, when four nobles, bearing a
corpse on a shrouded bier, enter and lay their burden at
the King's feet. A thrill of astonishment and horror runs
through the assembly as Telramund's friends are recognised
in the four pall -bearers. To all inquiries they answer that
602 LOHENGRIN.
the knight, the new guardian of Brabant, has sent them
there with their burden.
Elsa is now seen approaching with a train of ladies, her
head downcast in deepest sorrow, and the orchestra repeats
a fragment of the motive which indicates the
burden of the overhanging mystery. A new
ENTER ELSA.
commotion in the crowd, and in another moment
the knight of the Grail, fully armed in shining mail, as
in the first act, strides into the midst, and stands before
the King by the side of the shrouded bier. He is received
with acclamations as the heaven-sent hero, but at once
informs the King that all is changed now, that he has
been doggedly arraigned by a section of the nobles to re-
veal his name and nation, and that at this moment he
stands accused of foul murder. With these words he tears
the pall from Frederick Telramund's corpse, and declares
that in self-defence he slew him. His accents have hitherto
been proud and defiant, but as he nears the subject of his
great personal sorrow his tone changes, as though for a
moment his inner mood were coloured by a tenderer and
more regretful glow of feeling. As he proceeds to recount
his brider's fault of faith, he recovers himself, and prepares
to make the fateful announcement which is to free his bonds
on earth, deprive him of his love, and restore him to the
heaven of Montsalvat. Rising to his full stature, whilst
his face glows with the dignified consciousness of his high
"I AM LOHENGRIN." 603
origin, " I do not shrink from declaring my name and
lineage. Ye shall know that I am more than the equal
of the proudest noble here/*
Then follows the masterly summary of the opening
orchestral prelude, the leading parts being for the first
time transferred in a consecutive melody to the
"i AM hero. Then the legend of the Sangrail comes
forth. The story of the shining halls of Mont-
salvat, with its consecrated knights ; of his own mission to
succour the oppressed, of the ineffable raptures of the
blessed cup. The whole orchestration, now headed by the
mystic knight, is like the actual unfolding in flesh and
blood, or revelation to the eye of sense of what in the
ethereal introduction was but an anticipatory vision.
The crystal globe has yielded up its secret. The parable
of the Grail is about to be realised as the knight declares,
" My father is crowned Parsifal, and I am LOHENGRIN ! "
An immense emotion now takes possession of the
monarch and his assembled lieges. ce While I hear him,"
exclaims the King, "the holy tears course down my cheeks."
Poor Elsa staggers back " 'Tis all dark dark ! The
earth reels ! air air I cannot breathe ! " Her fainting
form is caught in Lohengrin's arms, longing, hungering
for her the last time. " I felt thou wast the soul of all
delight." It is almost the last touch of earthly passion.
Elsa, awaking from her swoon, tries passionately to detain
G04 LOHENGRIN.
him. She despairs, she repents, she will do any penance.
Too late ! " Alas ! my sweetest wife, I must leave thee for
ever/' It is his only, but inexorable reply. Elsa seems
stunned : worn out for a moment with the intense emotion,
she lies still in his arms. The knight commits her fainting
to her ladies, then turns, and explains that he cannot lead
the army to war; that he must return from whence he came.
But on the distant Scheldt the portent is now seen again.
Groups crowd once more, and rush to the river banks.
The cry of "The swan! the swan!" resounds
THE SWAN I on all sides. Lohengrin advances to the swan,
now close on the banks with the empty skiff,
and greets the fair white bird with a modified form of
the first magic strain, which is so widely known as the
" Swan '' motive. But ere he ascends the bark he unlocks
the riddle of the swan, and the mystery of the vanished
Gottfried, Elsa's brother. He returns for a moment to
fold his lost bride in one last embrace, to tell her, that
had she been true, in a year her brother would have been
restored, and her husband would not have been lost to her ;
that now, his ring, his horn, and his sword, alone can be
left with her. These she must give to her brother when
he appears. They are the sure means of victory ; they will
constitute him the leader and Overlord of his people. He
then commits himself once more to the service of the Holy
Grail, and strides back to the empty bark.
EXIT LOHENGRIN. G03
Elsa falls prostrate. At that moment Ortrud steps
forth, and exultingly confesses her wicked sorcery. S/ie
has enchained Gottfried under the form of a
503.
EXIT swan, and she declares that had the knight
LOHENGRIN.
tarried another minute, the spell would have
been broken, and Gottfried restored. But at that instant,
whilst a burst of execration rises from the crowd, the swan
vanishes the young Gottfried rushes towards Elsa.
The dove of the Holy Grail flutters down, and is har-
nessed by Lohengrin to the bark, which moves off apace
with the shining knight. With a scream of joy, Elsa
falls into her brother's arms, and then catching sight of
her beloved borne away on the great flood, with a wild
despairing cry of " My husband ! " sinks lifeless to the
ground.
-The consummate dramatic finish of this scene will bear
the fullest analysis ; it will feed the profoundest meditation.
504. The struggle between the earthly love and the
CONCLUSION h ea venly mission of the holy knight ; the serene
SUMMARY, triumph of the latter, in the midst of that ecstatic
contemplation of celestial glory which fills his last long
monologue; the entire, unhurried performance of his whole
mission, and detailed delivery ere he goes, of the perfect
plot perfectly wrought out; the tender memory of the swan;
the overpowering spell that is upon him to depart, as the
vision of the Grail comes, whose he is and whom he serves ;
606 LOHENGRIN.
the crushed self-abasement of Elsa, her Jate repentance
too late; her illogical passion, hoping against hope to detain
her knight ; her exhausted emotions, waking at last only
in fitful bursts, and exhibiting in the shock of their com-
plete overthrow the phenomena of wild joy, instantly
followed by the last flood of grief, in which her very life
seems to exhale itself; the fateful gleam of a malignant
spite, which prompts Ortrud a moment too soon to reveal
her secret; the crowning vision of the Sangrail, in the
shape of the heavenly dove which once a year descended
to' renew the potency of the sacrificial cup, and now flutters
for a second before the dazed eyes of mortals, in that
supreme hour of an accomplished deliverance ; and lastly,
the perfect close, and sense of dramatic unity left upon
the mind by the departure of the shining knight, as he
came, over the great water-floods, lost as soon as known
eternal symbol of the joy and tender glories that are for
ever vanishing in the moment of possession ; yet, in their
transitory glow, leaving behind them the memory which
is to feed the coming years with the bright legacy of an
aspiring and insatiable hope : all this must stamp Lohengrin
as, indeed, every work of WAGNER'S is stamped with an
impress of earnest reality separating it from all ordinary
operas, and constituting it a great poem, wedded to
dramatic action and filled with noble music.
THE FIRST MEN. 607
INTERLUDE
ON PHENOMENAL PLAYERS.
THE greatest phenomenal players of their age have un-
doubtedly been LISZT and PAOANINI. They were great
not merely because they could play better than
THE FIRST others, but because they created what they
played. It is quite possible to maintain that
RUBINSTEIN and BULOW play quite as well as LISZT, or
that ERNST and JOACHIM are as good as PAGANINI, but
it is nevertheless an absurdity and impertinence to argue
the point. They were not the first they came afterwards.
A man who takes gold out of a mine may be as good as
the man who discovered the mine, but he is not that man.
He does excellent work, but he was not the first on tho
ground he came afterwards.
A thing once discovered cannot be rediscovered, and an
608 INTERLUDE ON PHENOMENAL PLAYERS.
aureole shines round the head of the pioneer to which no
50G. subsequent traveller may lay claim. Bat quite
*" apart from what is new and original in their
respective contributions to Art, it is doubtful
whether two such extraordinary personalities as those of
PAGANINI and LISZT have ever appeared in the world of
virtuosity. In some respects LISZT is even more extra-
ordinary than PAGANINI; for, in the first place, he elec-
trified a world still under thd spell of the weird Italian's
Cremona; and, in the second place, his demands have
achieved for the piano what no demands of PAGANINI
ever could for the violin a profound modification and
re-creation of the instrument to enable him to realise his
prodigious feats of sonority and execution. The modifica-
tions introduced by violin repairers strengthening bars
ribs, glueing cracks, &c. are trifling compared to th
changes which separate the pianoforte of 1820 from that
of 1880. PAGANINI is the creator of the modern violin
school ; but LISZT has not only created the modern piano-
forte school, but in some sort the modern pianoforte.
Great heart, great brain, daring originality, electric
organisation, iron nerve, and a soul vibrating to sound like
an ./Eolian harp to the wind; there you have the per-
sonality, phenomenal and unique, of FRAXZ LISZT.
WHO HAS HEARD LISZT? 609
XT.
LISZT.
W/io has not heard of LISZT ? Who has heard LISZT ? I
suppose to most of us in England he is personally a great
607. tradition and nothing more ; his compositions,
WHO HAS i nc ] eec ^ form the chief pieces de resistance of our
LISZT? annual crop of pianoforte recitals, but the man
and his playing are alike unknown. He has already become
historical during his life-time. Only by a happy chance
can I reckon myself amongst the lew who have lately heard
LISZT play.
I happened to be staying in Rome, and LISZT kindly
invited me over to the Villa d'Este twice.
There at Tivoli, alone with him, he conversed with me of
the times long gone by of MENDELSSOHN, of PAGANINI,
of CHOPIN.
There in the warm light of an Italian autumn, subdued
by the dark-red curtains that hung in his study, with an
old-world silence around us, he sat at his piano once more ;
and as he played to me the clock of time went back, and
CHOPIN entered with his pale refined face, his slight aristo-
cratic figure: HEINE sat restlessly in a dark corner;
39
610 LISZT.
MADAME SAND reclined in the deep window- niche overlook-
ing the desolate Campagna, with Rome in the distance;
DE LAMMENAIS stood at the foot of the piano a delicate,
yet sinewy and mobile frame with his noble eager face
all aglow, his eloquent tongue silent, listening to the
inspiration of another believer in another evangelium the
evangeliura of the emotions, the Gospel of Art.
Shadows all of you, yet to me for an hour, in the deep
solitude of the great Cardinal's palace alone with LISZT,
more real than the men and women of our lesser day.
LISZT is the embodiment of an epoch. In religion,
politics, and philosophy he represents that creative ferment
508. through which the genius of the nineteenth cen-
LISZT tury has come to the understanding and posses-
JEHBODIES
AN EPOCH. s i on O f itself. The Romanticism of 1830-40,
with all its deplorable aberrations, its reactionary and one-
sided views, its hazardous experiments, its impatience of
authority, its childlike and impulsive fancy, was nevertheless
a great creative period.
Then were sown the seeds that have since germinated so
gloriously in literature, and art, and politics throughout
Europe. Then flourished, or at least were born, the men
who impressed this century with its peculiar characteristics
its insatiable thirst for knowledge, boundless curiosity,
noble upward endeavour, despairing scepticism, trembling
hope, eager love of life and intense belief in itself, intuitive
1811 THE COMET TEAR. 611
convictions which every decade has done something to
deepen and perhaps to justify.
It was the age of LISZT, of PAGANINI, THALBERQ; of
MENDELSSOHN, SCHUMANN, SPOHR, CHOPIN, "WAGNER; of
LAMARTINE, GEORGE SAND, ALFRED DE MUSSET, VICTOR
HUGO ; of BYRON, SHELLEY, COLERIDGE, SCOTT, and WORDS-
WORTH age of upheaval and revolution, ferment of new
life, unsettlement of old opinions. The political heavens
were full of portents ; the firmament of art flashing with
meteors ; the social world alive and palpitating with new
theories of life, which mistook license for liberty truly an
age convulsed with the violence of the old aboriginal im-
pulses suddenly let locse.
One thousand eight hundred and eleven was the year of
the great comet a year which, we are told, re-echoed
509 with the sounds of the lyre and the sword, and
n - announced so many pioneering spirits of the
TH;i COMET *
YEAB. future.
In 1811 was FRANZ LISZT born. He had the hot Hun-
garian blood of his father, the fervid German spirit of his
mother, and he inherited the lofty independence, with none
of the class prejudices, of the old Hungarian nobility from
which he sprang.
LISZT'S father, ADAM, earned a modest livelihood as agent
and accountant in the house of COUNT ESTERHAZY. In that
great musical family inseparably associated with the names
39 *
612 LISZT.
of HAYDN and SCHUBERT,* ADAM LISZT had frequent
opportunities of meeting distinguished musicians. The
Prince's private band had risen to public fame under the
instruction of the venerable HAYDN himself. The LISZTS,
father and son, often went to Eisenstadt, where the Count
lived ; there they rubbed elbows with CHERUBINI and
HUMMEL, a pupil of MOZART.
FRANZ took to music from his earliest childhood. When
about five years old, he was asked what he would like to do.
" Learn the piano/' said the little fellow. Soon
510.
M LEARN THE afterwards his father asked him what he would
like to be; the child pointed to a print of
BEETHOVEN hanging on the wall, and said, "Like him/'
Long before his feet could reach the pedals or his fingers
stretch an octave, the boy spent all his spare time strum-
ming, making what he called " clangs," chords, and modu-
lations. He mastered scales and exercises without difficulty.
But there was a certain intensity in all he did, which
seemed to wear him out. He was attacked with fever, but
would hardly be persuaded to lie down until
511 * completely exhausted: then he lay and praved
CIIAUACTEB.
aloud to God to make him well, and vowed that
on his recovery he would only make hymns and play music
* See my Music and Morals, sections 96, 106, 1st Edition.
THE WHEREWITHAL. 613
which pleased God and his parents. The strong lines of his
character early asserted themselves religious ardour, open
sincerity, a certain nobleness of soul that scorned a lie
and generously confessed to a fault, quick affections, ready
sympathies, a mind singularly without prejudices or antipa-
thies, except in music. LISZT'S musical antipathies are
matters of world- wide notoriety ; his hatred of " Conserva-
torium " dogma, his contempt for the musical doctrinaire,
his aversion to the shallow and frivolous, his abhorrence of
mere sensationalism.
The boy's decided bent soon banished all thought of any-
thing but a musical vocation, but the res angusta domi
stood in the way. How was he to be taught?
olZt
THE WHEEE- how was he to be heard ? how to earn money ?
That personal fascination, from which no one
who has ever come in contact with LISZT has quite escaped,
helped him thus early. When eight years old, he played
before COUNT ESTERHAZY in the presence of six noblemen,
amongst them COUNTS AMADEE, APPONYI, and SZAPARY
eternal honour to their names ! They at once subscribed
for him an annuity of six hundred gulden for six years.
This was to help the little prodigy to a musical education.
His parents felt the whole importance of the crisis. If
the boy was to prosper, the father's present retired life with
a fixed income must be changed for an unsettled wandering
and precarious existence. " When the six years are over,
614 LISZT.
and your hopes prove vain, what will become of us ? " said
his mother, who heard, with tears in her eyes, that father
was going to give up the agency and settle down wherever
the boy might need instruction, protection, and a home.
" Mother," said the impetuous child, " what God wills ! "
and he added, prophetically enough, " God will help me to
repay you for all your anxieties and for what you do for
me." And with what results he laboured in this faith,
years afterwards in Paris, we shall see.
The agency was thrown up ; the humble family, mother,
father, son, went out alone from the little Hungarian village
into an unknown and untried world, simply
51 o.
THE WIDE, trusting to the genius, the will, the word of an
' D ' obscure child of eight : " I will be a musician,
and nothing else ! "
As the child knelt at his farewell mass in the little village
church of Raiding, many wept, others shook their heads,
but some even then seemed to have a presentiment of his
future greatness, and said, "That boy will one day come
back in a glass coach." This modest symbol represented to
them the idea of boundless wealth.
HUMMEL would only teach for a golden louis a lesson, and
then picked his pupils ; but at Vienna the father
514.
MANY arid son fell in with CZERNY, BEETHOVEN'S pupil,
and the famous SALIERI, now seventy years old.
FIRST APPEARANCES. 615
CZERNY at once took to LISZT, but refused to take any-
thing for his instruction. SALIERI was also fascinated, and
instructed him in harmony ; and fortunate it was that LISZT
began his course under two such strict mentors.
He soon began to resent CZERNY'S method, thought he
knew better and needed not those dry studies of CLEMENTI
and that irksome fingering by rule ; he could finger every-
thing in half-a-dozen different ways. There was a moment
when it seemed that master and pupil would have to part ;
but timely concessions to genius paved the way to dutiful
submission, and years afterwards the great master dedicated
to the rigid disciplinarian of his boyhood his Vingt-quatre
Grandes Eludes in affectionate remembrance.
Young talent often splits upon the rock of self-sufficiency.
Many a clever artist has failed because in the pride of
youthful facility he has declined the method and drudgery
of a correct technique.
Such a light as LISZT'S could not be long hid; all Vienna
in 1822 was talking of the wonderful boy. " Est deus in
nobis," wrote the papers rather profanely. The
FIHST "little Hercules," the "young giant," the boy
APPEARANCES. ,, A. f j.T_ 1 J > L xT,'
" virtuoso trom the clouds, were amongst the
epithets coined to celebrate his marvellous rendering of
HUMMEI/S " Concerto in A " and a free " Fantasia " of his
own.
The Vienna Concert Hall was crowded to hear him ; and
616 LISZT.
the other illustrious artists then, as indeed they have been
ever since forced to do wherever LISZT appeared effaced
themselves with as good a grace as they could.
It is a remarkable tribute to the generous nature as well
as to the consummate ability of LISZT, that, whilst opposing
partisans have fought bitterly over him Thalbergites,
Herzites, Mendelssohnites versus Lisztites yet few of the
great artists who have, one after another, had to yield to
him in popularity have denied to him their admiration,
while most of them have given him their friendship.
LISZT early wooed arid early won Vienna. He spoke
ever of his dear Viennese and their " resounding city."
When I saw LISZT at Tivoli in 1880, ^1 remember his
saying to me, "J'ai regu le celebre baiser de BEETHOVEN."
I find that BEETHOVEN'S secretary. SCHINDLER,
516.
IHE KISS OF wrote, in 1823, to BEETHOVEN : " You will be
*' present at little LISZT'S concert, will you not ?
It will encourage the boy. Promise me that you will go."
And BEETHOVEN went. When the " little LISZT " stepped
on to the platform, he saw BEETHOVEN in the front row ; it
nerved instead of staggering him he played with an aban-
don and inspiration which defied criticism. Amidst the
storm of applause which followed, BEETHOVEN was observed
to step up on the platform, take the young virtuoso in his
arms, and salute him, as LISZT assured me, " on both
cheeks." This was an event not to be lightly forgotten,
CHE RUB INI AND LISZT. PRODIGIOUS ! 617
and hardly after fifty-seven years to be alluded to without
a certain awe ; indeed, LISZT'S voice quite betrayed his sense
of the seriousness of the occasion as he repeated, with a
certain conscious pride and gravity, " Oui, j'ai TCQU le baiser
de BEETHOVEN."
A concert tour on his way to Paris brought him before
the critical public of Stuttgardt and Munich. HUMMEL, an
old man, and MOSCHELES, then in his prime, heard
517.
CHEKOBINI him, and declared that his playing was equal to
theirs. But LISZT was bent upon completing his
studies in the celebrated school of the French capital, and
at the feet of the old musical dictator CHERUBINI.
The ERARDS, who were destined to owe so much to LISZT,
and to whom LISZT throughout his career has owed so
much, at once provided him with a magnificent piano ; but
CHERUBINI put in force a certain bye-law of the Conservatoire
excluding foreigners, and excluded FRANZ LISZT.
This was a bitter pill to the eager student. He hardly
knew how little he required such patronage. In a very
short time " le petit LISZT " was the great Paris
518- sensation. The old noblesse tried to spoil him
PBODIGIODS I
with flattery, the DUCHESS DE BERRI drugged
him with bonbons, the DUKE OF ORLEANS called him the
"little MOZART." He gave private concerts at which HERZ,
MOSCHELES, LAFONT, and DE BERIOT assisted. ROSSINI
618 LISZT.
would sit by his side at the piano and applaud. He was
a " miracle." The company never tired of extolling his
" verve, fougue et originalite, 1 ' whilst the ladies, who petted
and caressed him after each performance, were delighted at
his simple and graceful carriage, the elegance of his language,
and the perfect breeding and propriety of his demeanour.
He was only twelve when he played for the first time at
the Italian Opera, and one of those singular incidents which
remind one of PAGANINI'S triumphs occurred.
At the close of a bravura cadenza the band forgot to come
in, so absorbed were the musicians in watching the young
prodigy. Their failure was worth a dozen successes to LISZT.
The ball of the marvellous was fairly set rolling.
GALL, the inventor of phrenology, took a cast cf the
little LISZT'S skull ; TALMA, the tragedian, embraced him
publicly with effusion ; and the misanthropic MARQUIS DE
NOAILLES became his mentor, and initiated him into the art
of painting.
In 1824 LISZT, then thirteen years old, came with his
father to England ; his mother returned to Austria.
He went down to Windsor to see GEORGE IV.,
519.
OEOKGE iv. who was delighted with him, and LISZT, speaking
AND LISZT. n i j ff -r
or him to me, said : " 1 was very young at the
time, but I remember the king very well a fine pompous-
looking gentleman/'
In London he met CLEMENTI, whose exercises he had so
A CHANGE. 619
objected to, CIPRIANI POTTER, CRAMER, also of exercise
celebrity, KALKBRENNER, NEATE, then a fashionable
pianist, once a great favourite of GEORGE III., and
whom I remember about thirty years ago in extreme old
age at Brighton. He described to me the poor old king's
delight at hearing him play some simple English melodies.
"I assure you, Mr. NEATE," said GEORGE III., "I have
had more pleasure in hearing you play those simple airs
than in all the variations and tricks your fine players
affect."
GEORGE IV. went to Drury Lane on purpose to hear
the boy, and commanded an encore. LISZT was also
heard in the theatre at Manchester, and in several private
houses.
On his return to France people noticed a change in him.
He was now fourteen, grave, serious, often pre- occupied,
already a little tired of praise, and excessively
tired of being called " le petit LISZT." His vision
X CHANGE.
began to take a wider sweep. The relation
between art and religion exercised him. His mind was
naturally devout. THOMAS A KEMPIS was his constant com-
panion. " Rejoice in nothing but a good deed"; "Through
labour to rest, through combat to victory " ; " The glory
which men give and take is transitory" these and like
phrases were already deeply engraven on the fleshly tablets
of his heart. Amidst all his glowing triumphs he was
620 LISZT.
developing a curious disinclination to appear in public; he
seemed to yearn for solitude and meditation.
In 1827 he now again hurried to England for a short
time, but his father's sudden illness drove them to Boulogne,
where, in his forty-seventh year, died ADAM
521.
DEATH OF LISZT, leaving the young FRANZ for the first time
in his life, at the early age of sixteen, unprotected
and alone.
Rousing himself from the bodily prostration and torpor
of grief into which he had been thrown by the death of his
father, FRANZ, with admirable energy and that high sense
of honour which has always distinguished him, began
to set his house in order. He called in all his debts,
sold his magnificent grand Erard, and left Boulogne for
Paris with a heavy heart and a light pocket, but not owing
a sou.
He sent for his mother, and for the next twelve years,
18.28-1840, the two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There,
as a child, he had been a nine-day's wonder, but
522.
CARE OF HIS the solidity of his reputation was now destined to
go hand in hand with his stormy and inter-
rupted mental and moral development.
Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once.
No drawing-room or concert-room success satisfied a heart
for which the world of human emotion seemed too small,
UNSETTLED CONDITIONS. 621
and an intellect piercing with intuitive intelligence into the
" clear-obscure " depths of religion and philosophy.
But FRANZ was young, and FRANZ was poor, and his
mother had to be supported. She was his first care. Syste-
matically, he laboured to put by a sum which would
assure her of a competency, and often with his tender genial
smile he would remind her of his own childish words, " God
will help me to repay you for all that you have done for
me." Still he laboured often wofully against the grain.
" Poverty " he writes, "that old mediator between man
and evil, tore me from my solitude devoted to meditation, and
placed me before a public on whom not only my own but
my own mother's existence depended. Young and over-
strained, I suffered painfully under the contact with external
things which my vocation as a musician brought with it,
and which wounded me all the more intensely that my
heart at this time was filled entirely with the mystical
feelings of love and religion."
Of course the gifted young pianist's connection grew
rapidly. He got his twenty francs a lesson at the best
houses ; he was naturally a welcome guest, and
0S*wi
UNSETTLED from the first seemed to have the run of high
CONDITIONS. T> j. TT- Tf f 1 T_
ransian society. His lite was ieverish, his
activity irregular, his health far from strong ; but the vulgar
temptations of the gay capital seemed to have little attrac-
tion for his noble nature. His heart remained unspoiled.
622 LISZT.
He was most generous to those who could not afford to pay
for his lessons, most pitiful to the poor, most dutiful and
affectionate to his mother. Coming home late from some
grand entertainment, he would sit outside on the staircase
till morning sooner than awaken, or perhaps alarm, her by
letting himself in. But in losing his father he seemed to
have lost a certain method and order. His meals were
irregular, so were his lessons; more so were the hours
devoted to sleep.
At this time he was hardly twenty ; we are not surprised
anon to hear in his own words of " a female form chaste
and pure as the alabaster of holy vessel " : but
524.
A FEMALE he adds : " Such was the sacrifice which I offered
FORMl with tears to the God of Christians ! "
I will explain.
MDLLE. CAROLINE ST. CRICQ was just seventeen, lithe,
slender, and of " angelic " beauty, and a complexion like a
lily flushed with roses, " impressionable to beauty, to the
world, to religion, to God." The Countess, her mother,
appears to have been a charming woman, very partial to
LISZT, whom she engaged to instruct Mademoiselle in music.
The lessons were not by time, but by inclination. The
young man's eloquence, varied knowledge, ardent love of
literature, and flashing genius won both the mother and
daughter. Not one of them seemed to suspect the whirl-
pool of grief and death to which they were hurrying. The
LOVE AND GRIEF. 623
Countess fell ill and died, but not before she had recom-
mended LISZT to the COUNT ST. CRICQ as a possible suitor
for the hand of Mademoiselle.
The haughty diplomat ST. CRICQ at once put his foot
down. The funeral over, LISZT'S movements were watched.
They were innocent enough. He was already an enfant de
la maison, but one night he lingered reading aloud some
favourite author to Mademoiselle a little too late. He was
reported by the servants, and received his polite dismissal
as music master.
In an interview with the Count his own pride was deeply
wounded. " Difference of rank ! " said the Count. That
was quite enough for LISZT. He rose, pale as death, with
quivering lip, but uttered not a word.
As a man of honour he had but one course. He and
CAROLINE parted for ever. She contracted later an uncon-
genial marriage; he seems to have turned with intense
ardour to religion. His good mother used to complain to
those who came to inquire for him that he was all day long
in church, and had ceased to occupy himself, as he should,
with music.
Love, grief, religion, all struggling together for victory
in that young and fervid spirit, at last seemed
525.
LOVE AND to fairly exhaust him. His old haunts knew
him not ; his pupils were neglected ; he saw no
friends ; shut himself up in his room ; and at last would only
624 LISZT.
see his mother at meals. He never appeared in the streets,
and not unnaturally ended by falling dangerously ill.
It was at this time that Paris was one moruing startled
with the following newspaper announcement :
" DEATH OF YOUNG LISZT.
526.
DEATH OP Young LISZT died at Paris the event is
TOUNQ' LISZT."
painful at an age when most children are at
school. He had conquered the public/' &c.
So wrote the Etoile. In fact, he was seriously ill.
M. VON LENZ, BEETHOVEN'S biographer, went to visit him.
He was lying pale, haggard, and apathetic ; could hardly be
roused to converse except occasionally when music cropped
up. Then his eye brightened for a moment like the
" flashing of a dagger in the sun."
In 1830 the Revolution burst on Paris. This, it seems,
was needed to arouse LISZT. The inner life was suddenly to
527. be exchanged for the outer. Self was to be
REVOLUTION mer pr e( j j n the l&rseT interests, some of them
AND RESUR-
RECTION, delusions, which now began to pose again under
the cunning watchwords of "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite."
Generous souls saw in the quarrel of CHARLES X. with
his people the hope of a new national life. They proposed
to exchange the old and effete " Divine right " for the legiti-
mate "sovereignty of the people." " C'est le canon qui 1'a
PAGANINI ANT) THE AGE. 625
gueri ! '' his mother used to say. LISZT was hardly re-
strained by her tears and entreaties from rushing to the
barricades. The cure threatened to be worse than the
disease. The heroic deeds of the " great week " inflamed
him, and he shouted with the rest for the silver-haired
GENERAL LAFAYETTE, " genius of the liberties of two
worlds."
The republican enthusiasm, so happily restrained from
action out of affection for his dependent mother, found a
528. more wholesome vent in a vigorous return to his
PA ANi> Iia ne gl ecte d ar *' J ust as ne was busy revolving
THE AGE. great battle symphonies, his whole artistic nature
received a decisive and startling impulse from the sudden
apparition of PAGANINI in Paris. Preceded by revolution
and cholera, this weird man had come upon the bright city
that had sinned and suffered so much, and found her shaken
and demoralised, but still seething with a strange ferment
of new life in which Saint-Simonianism, communism, and
scepticism, side by side with fanaticism, piety, and romance,
struggled to make confusion worse confounded. Into the
depths of what has been called the Romantic movement of
1830-40 it is not my purpose here to enter. There was war
alike with the artificial hum- drum of the old French world
and the still more artificial revival of the classical world of
Greece and Rome.
The human spirit was at length to be liberated ; no one,
40
C26 LISZT.
it was held, need believe anything that did not happen to
commend itself to his fancy or passion. As HEINE put it :
" The great God, it appeared, was not at all the being in
whom our grandmothers had trusted ; he was, in fact, none
other than you yourself/' No one need be bound by the
morals of an effete civilisation. In Love the world of sen-
timent alone must decide our actions. Everyone must be
true to nature. All men were brothers, and women should
have equal and independent rights. The social contract,
most free and variable, must be substituted for marriage,
community of goods for hereditary possessions, philosophy
for law, and romance for religion. The beautiful and
pregnant seeds of truth that lay imbedded in the teeming
soil of this great movement have since fully germinated ;
its extravagances have already, to a great extent, been
outgrown.
In spite of theories disastrous to political and social
order, the genius of MADAME SAND, VICTOR HUGO, and
A. DE MUSSET, sceptic and sensualist as he was, have
rescued the movement from the despair of raw materialism,
and produced works of immortal beauty and spiritual
significance.
They helped the European spirit to recover its indepen-
dence, they reacted against the levelling tyranny of the first
NAPOLEON, and were largely instrumental in undermining
the third NAPOLEON'S throne of gilded lead. Stained with
licence and full of waywardness, it was, nevertheless, an age
PAG AN IN I AND THE AGE. 627
of great and strong feelings an age volcanic, vivid, electric.
Such an age eagerly welcomed the magicians who set the
language of emotion free, and gave to music its myriad
wings and million voices.
PAGANINI appeared. The violin was no more the violin.
A new transcendent technique made it the absolute minister
of an emancipated and fantastic will. The extraordinary
power exercised by the Italian violinist throughout Europe
was quickened by the electric air which he breathed. The
times were ripe. He stood before kings and people as the
very emotional embodiment of the Zeitgeist. He was the
emancipated demon of the epoch, with power to wield
the sceptre of sound, and marshal in strange and frenzied
legions the troubled spirits of the time.
When LISZT heard PAGANINI, it seemed to him to be the
message for which he had been waiting. From him he
doubtless received that passion for " transcendant execu-
tion/' that absolute perfection of technique, which enabled
him to create the modern pianoforte school, and win for
ERARD and BROAD WOOD what PAGANINI won for STRADI-
VARIUS and JOSEPH GUARNERIUS. His transcriptions of
PAGANINI'S studies, the arpeggio, ihefioriture, the prodigious
attaque and elan that took audiences by storm, the meetings
of extremes which abolished the spaces on the pianoforte
key-board by making the hands ubiquitous these and other
" developments " were doubtless inspired by the prodigious
feats of PAGANINI.
40 *
628 LISZT.
LISZT now suddenly retired from the concert-room. He
was no longer heard in public ; he seemed disinclined,
529. except in the presence of his intimates, to ex-
LISZT hibit his wondrous talent : but he retired to per-
WITHDRAWS
HIMSELF. f ec t himself, to work up and work out the new
impulses which he had received from PAGANINI.
He thus early laid deep the foundations of his unique
virtuosity ; and when he reappeared in public, he seemed to
mount at once to that solitary pinnacle of fame and sur-
passing excellence to which the greatest pianists then and
ever since have looked up in admiring and despairing
wonder. TAUSIG said, " "We are all blockheads by the
side of LISZT." RUBINSTEIN has often declared LISZT'S
perfection of art and wealth of resource to be simply
unrivalled.
For a short time in his absence at Paris, it was thought
* O
that THALBERG would prove a formidable opponent. But
LISZT had only to reappear, and THALBERG him-
*oU.
LISZT AND self was forced to join in the general applause.
When between the various schools there was
war, it was carried on by the partisans of the great men.
Although they freely criticised one another, nothing is more
remarkable than the kindly personal feeling which obtained
between LISZT and his natural enemies, the great pianists
of the age, MOSCHELES, CHOPIN, MENDELSSOHN, THALBERG.
There were no doubt cabals, and at one time in Paris he
REACTION. LISZT AND DE LAMENNAlS. 629
met with much detraction, but he seemed to move in a
region of lofty courtesy in which squabbling for precedence
was out of place; and his generosity of heart and genial
recognition of others' talent disarmed criticism and silenced
malice.
With the outburst of the Revolution, with the appearance
of PAGANINI, came also to LISZT a violent reaction against
the current religious ideas and the whole of the
KQi
Catholic teaching. Reading had opened his
REACTION.
eyes; the Catholic system seemed to him not
only inadequate, but false. He required a freer atmosphere,
one rather more interpretative of human facts and human
nature ; he thought he found it in the doctrines of the
Saint-Simonians. The " Nouveau Christianisme," by far
the best of ST. SIMON'S lucubrations, seemed to show that
the Church had misrepresented and outraged the religion of
CHRIST. It failed to take due account of art and science,
had no sympathy with progress, refused altogether to assi-
milate the Zeitgeist, and had evidently ceased to lead the
thinkers or purify the masses.
About this time LISZT came across the eloquent and
gifted ABBE DE LAMENNAIS. This man it was
532.
LISZT AND DE who, more than any other, saved LISZT from
"*' drifting into the prevailing whirlpool of atheism.
The heterodox Abbe, who himself had broken with the
630 LISZT.
retrograde religion of Rome, re -formulated his system, and
discovered for him what at that time he most craved for a
link between his religion and his art.
" Art/' said DE LAMENNAIS, " is in man what creative
power is in GOD." Art is the embodiment of eternal types.
Nature suggests a beauty she never completely realises.
Only in the soul of man is the supernal beauty mirrored as
it exists in the mind of God. Art is the soul's formula
for the expression of its inner life. " Art, therefore, is an
expression of GOD j her works are an infinite manifold
reflection of Him.'
The mission of art to reveal the secrets of the inner life,
to lift the souls of others into high communion with
itself, to express its joy in possession, its hope
THE MISSION of attainment, its instiable and divine longings,
its dreams of the infinite these seemed to LISZT
high functions, enriching, fertilising, and consoling all life,
and leading the spirit forth into that weird border-land of
the emotions, where voices come to it from the Unseen, and
radiant flashes from behind the Veil.
It was towards the close of 1831 that LISZT met CHOPIN
in Paris. From the first, these two men. so
534.
LISZT AND different, became fast friends. CHOPIN'S delicate,
retiring soul found a singular delight in LISZT'S
strong and imposing personality. LISZT'S exquisite per-
LISZT AND CHOPIN. 631
ception enabled him perfectly to live in the strange dream-
land of CHOPIN'S fancies, whilst his own vigour inspired
CHOPIN with nerve to conceive those mighty Polonaises that
he could never properly play himself, and which he so
gladly committed to the keeping of his prodigious friend.
LISZT undertook the task of interpreting CHOPIN to the
mixed crowds which he revelled in subduing, but from
which his fastidious and delicately-strung friend shrank with
something like aversion.
From CHOPIN, LISZT and all the world after him got
that tempo rubato, that playing with the duration of notes
without breaking the time, and those arabesque ornaments
which are woven like fine embroidery all about the pages of
CHOPIN'S nocturnes, and which lift what in others are
mere casual nourishes into the dignity of interpretative
phrases and poetic commentaries on the text.
People were fond of comparing the two young men who
so often appeared in the same salons together LISZT with
his finely-shaped, long, oval head and profile d'ivoire, set
proudly on his shoulders, his stiff hair of dark blonde
thrown back from the forehead without a parting, and
cut in a straight line, his aplomb, his magnificent and
courtly bearing, his ready tongue, his flashing wit and fine
irony, his genial bonhomie and irresistibly winning smile ;
and CHOPIN, also with dark blonde hair, but soft as silk
parted on one side, to use LISZT'S own words, " an angel of
fair countenance with brown eyes, from which intellect
C32 LISZT.
beamed rather than burned, a gentle, refined smile, slightly
aquiline nose, a delicious, clear, almost diaphonous com-
plexion, all bearing witness to the harmony of a soul which
required no commentary beyond itself."
Nothing can be more generous or more true than LISZT'S
recognition of CHOPIN'S independent support. "To our
endeavours/' he says, "to our struggles, just
LISZT ON then so much needing certainty, he lent us the
support of a calm, unshakable conviction, equally
armed against apathy and cajolery/' There was only one
picture on the walls of CHOPIN'S room; it hung just above
his piano. It was a head of LISZT.
The over-intensity of LISZT'S powerful nature may have
occasionally led him into extravagances of virtuosity, which
laid him open to some just criticism. ROBERT SCHUMANN
observed acutely : " It appears as if the sight of CHOPIN
brought him again to his senses."
It is no part of my present scheme to describe the battle
which romanticism in music waged against the prevalent
conventionalities. We know the general out-
006.
TUB ELEMENTS come of the struggle culminating, after the most
OF THE
MUSIC OP prodigious artistic convulsions, m the musical
supremacy of RICHARD WAGNER, who certainly
marks firmly and broadly enough the greatest stride in
musical development made since BEETHOVEN.
ELEMENTS OF THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE. 633
That HECTOR BERLIOZ emancipated the orchestra from
all previous trammels, and dealt with sound at first-hand as
the elemental and expressional breath of the soul, that he
was thus the immediate precursor of WAGNER, who said
with more modesty than truth, " I have invented nothing,"
this is now admitted. That SCHUMANN was afraid of the
excesses into which the romantic musicians threatened to
plunge, and, having started well and cheered them on,
showed some tendency to relapse into old form at the
moment when his ingenious and passionate soul sank into
final and premature gloom that has heen whispered. That
MENDELSSOHN was over-wedded to classical tradition and a
certain passion for neatness and precision which prevented
him from sounding the heights and depths of the revolu-
tionary epoch in the midst of which he moved, and by
which his sunny spirit was so little affected this I am now
able to see. That SPOHR was too doctrinaire and mannered,
MEYERBEER a great deal too fond of melo-drama and sen-
sation for its own sake, that ROSSINI and AUBER, exclusively
bent on amusing the public, were scarcely enough hommes
seneux to influence the deeper development of harmony,
or effect any revolution in musical form, most musicians
will allow; and that LISZT by his unique virtuosity has
made it difficult for the world to accept him in any other
capacity, is the constant grievance paraded by his admirers.
From all which reflections it may be inferred that many
workers have contributed to the wealth, resource, and
634 LISZT.
emancipation of modern music from those trammels which
sought to confine its spirit or limit its freedom. Through
past form, it has at length learned to use instead of being
used by form. The modern orchestra has won the unity
and spontaneity of an independent living organism. Like
the body, it is a complex mechanism, but it is to the mind
of the composer as the human body is to the soul. It
has grown so perfect an instrument, and deals with so
perfectly mastered an art, that a prelude like Lohengrin
or the opening of Parsifal sounds like the actual expres-
sion of the inner moods of the spirit rendered outwardly
with automatic unconscious fidelity. The rule, the technique,
are lost, hidden, forgotten, because completely efficacious,
and subordinated to the free movements of the composer's
spirit.
To this latest triumph of the musical art three men since
BEETHOVEN have mainly contributed ; their names are
certainly HECTOR BERLIOZ, WAGNER, and LISZT.
The darling of the aristocracy, accustomed from his
earliest youth to mix freely with the haute noblesse of
Germany and France, LISZT was a republican at
637.
LISZT AND heart. He felt acutely for the miseries of the
8 ' people, and he was always a great player for
the masses. " When I play," he once said, " I always
play for the people in the top gallery, so that those
who can pay but five groschen for their seats may also
LISZT AND THE BEGGARS. 635
get something for their money." He was ever foremost
in alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and
the helpless. He seems, indeed, to have been unable to
pass a beggar, and the beggars soon find that out; they
will even intrude upon his privacy and waylay him in his
garden.
Once, when at the height of his popularity in Paris,
a friend found him holding a crossing- sweeper's broom at
the corner of the street. "The fact is," said LISZT simply,
" I had no small change for the boy, so I told him to change
me five francs, and he asked me to hold his broom for him
till he returned." I forgot to ask LISZT whether the lad
ever came back.
I was walking with him one day in the private gardens of
the Villa d'Este at Tivoli when some little ruffians, who had
clambered over the wall, rushed up to him with a few
trumpery weeds, which they termed "bouquets." The
bejpevolent Maestro took the gift good-humouredly, and
fumbling in his pocket, produced several small coins, which
he gave to the urchins, turning to me apologetically :
"They expect it, you know. In fact," he added, with a
little shrug, " whenever I appear they do expect it." His
gifts were not always small. He could command large
sums of money at a moment's notice. The proceeds of
many a splendid concert went to manufacturing committees,
widows, orphans, sick and blind. He founded pensions
and provided funds for poor musicians; he set up monu-
636 LISZT.
ments to great artists. A pecuniary difficulty arising about
BEETHOVEN'S statue at Bonn, LISZT immediately guaran-
teed the whole sum. In the great commercial crisis of
1834 at Lyons LISZT gave concerts for the artisans out
of work ; and in Hungary, not long after, when the
overflow of the Danube rendered hundreds homeless, LISZT
was again to the fore with his brilliant performances for
charity.
All through his life he was an ardent pamphleteer, and
he fought not only for the poor, but in the highest
interests of his art, and above all for the dignity
THE DIGNITY of his own class. In this he was supported by
such musical royalties as MENDELSSOHN, ROSSINI,
PAGANINI, and LABLACHE. We have heard how in past
days the musicians were not expected to mix with the
company, a rope being laid down on the carpet, showing
the boundary line between the sacred and profane in social
rank.
On one occasion LABLACHE, entering the music saloon
at a certain great house, observed the usual rope laid down
in front of him when he came on to sing in a duet. He
quietly stooped down and tossed it aside. It was never
replaced, and the offensive practice dropped out of London
society from that day.
LIS/T refused to play at the court of QUEEN ISABELLA in
LISZT CZAR NICHOLAS LOUIS PHILIPPE. 637
Spain because the court etiquette forbade the introduction
_ 3g of musicians to royalty. In his opinion even
LISZT, CZAR crowned heads owed a certain deference and
NICHOLAS, .
AND LOUIS- "homage to the sovereignties of art, and he deter-
PHILIPPB. , - , ,, , .,
mined it should be paid.
He met CZAR NICHOLAS I., who had very little notion
of the respect due to anyone but himself, with an angry
look and a defiant word ; he tossed FREDERICK WILLIAM
IV.'s diamonds into the side scenes ; and broke a lance
with LOUIS-PHILIPPE, which cost him a decoration.
He never forgave that thrifty king for abolishing certain
musical pensions and otherwise snubbing art. He refused
on every occasion to play at the Tuileries. One day
the King and his suite paid a t( private view " visit to a
pianoforte exhibition of ERARD'S. LISZT happened to be
in the room, and was trying a piano just as His Majesty
entered. The King advanced genially towards him and
began a conversation; but LISZT merely bowed with a
polished but icy reserve.
" Do you still remember," said the King, " that you
played at my house when you were but a boy and I
DUKE OF ORLEANS? Much has changed since then."
"Yes, Sire/' replied LISZT dryly, "but not for the
better/'
The King showed his royal appreciation of the repartee by
striking the great musician's name off the list of those who
were about to receive the cross of the Legion of Honour.
638 LISZT.
The idol of Parisian drawing-rooms at a most susceptible
age, with his convictions profoundly shaken in Catholicism
540. and Church discipline, surrounded by wits and
"GEORGIA phil so ph ers w h were equally sceptical about
SAND. marriage and the very foundations of society as
then constituted, LISZT'S views of life not unnaturally under-
went a considerable change.
He had no doubt frankly and sincerely imbibed MME.
SAND'S early philosophy, and his witty saying, which reminds
me of something of the kind in Rasselas, that ''whether a
man marries or not, he will sooner or later be sure to repent
it," belongs to this period. His relations with MME. SAND
have been much misrepresented. He wa s far more attracted
by her genius than by her person, and although for long
years he entertained for her feelings of admiration and
esteem, she never exercised over hiru the despotic influence
which drove poor CHOPIN to despair.
Of the misguided Countess who threw herself upon his
protection, and whom he treated with the utmost considera-
641. tion and forbearance for several years, I shall
THE not have much to say : but it must be remem-
COONTESS *
D'AGOULT. bered that he was considerably her junior, that
he did his best to prevent her from taking the rash course
which separated her from her family and made her his
travelling companion, and that years afterwards her own
husband, as well as her brother, when affairs came to bo
"LISZT OR THE DEVIL." 639
arranged and the whole facts of the case were canvassed
in a conseil de famille at Paris, confessed of their own
accord that throughout LISZT had acted " like a man of
honour."
It was during his years of travel with the COUNTESS
D'AGOULT in Italy and Germany that LISZT composed the
great bulk of his celebrated transcriptions of songs and
operatic pieces, as well as the renowned Etudes d'Execution
Transcendante.
LISZT'S attempt to preserve his incognito in Italy con-
spicuously failed. He entered RICOKJDI'S music-shop at
Milan, and, sitting down at a grand piano,
542*
"LISZT OR began to improvise. " "Tis LISZT or the devil ! "
he heard RICORDI whisper to a clerk, and in
another moment the great Italian entrepreneur had wel-
comed the Hungarian virtuoso and placed his villa, his box
at the opera, his carriage and horses at his disposal. Of
course RICORDI very soon organised a concert, in which
the Milanese were invited to judge the "pianist of the
future," as he was then styled. The Milanese were better
pleased with LISZT than was LISZT with the Milanese. He
could not make them take to BEETHOVEN. They even
kicked at certain favourite studies of his own, but he won
them by his marvellous improvisations on fragments of their
darling ROSSINI, and afterwards wrote a smart article in the
Paris Gazette Musicale, expressing his dissatisfaction with
640 LISZT.
the frivolity of Italian musical culture, quoting in scorn a
voice from the pit which greeted one of his own " Preludes
Etudes " it was the word " etude " at which the pit stuck
"Vengo al teatro per divertirmi e non per studiare," a
sentiment which I think I have heard repeated in more
northern latitudes.
Of course LISZT'S free criticism got back to Milan. Milan
was furious. LISZT was at Venice. The papers denounced
643. him. Everybody proposed to fight duels with
LISZT'S n j m< jj e was f-Qhi that he could not play the
CHALLENGE *
TO MILAN, piano, and they handed him over to the devil.
LISZT wrote pacifying letters in the Milanese papers, but
the uproar only increased. What would happen if he ever
dared to show himself in Milan again, no one dared to
speculate. He was a monstrous ingrate ; he had insulted
everyone down to the decorators and chorographers of La
Scala, and he must be chastised summarily for his insolent
presumption.
When the disturbance was at its height, LISZT wrote to
the Milanese journals to say that he declined a paper war ;
that he had never intended to insult the Milanese; that he
would arrive shortly in Milan and hold himself in readiness
to receive all aggrieved persons, and give them every ex-
planation and satisfaction they might require.
On a hot summer's day he drove quietly through Milan
in an open carriage, and, taking up his abode at a fashionable
DISILLUSION. 641
hotel, awaited the arrival of the belligerents. But as not
one of them turned up or made the least sign, LISZT went
back to Venice.
When, however, in fulfilment of a promise, he returned in
September, he met with a characteristic snub, for his concert
was poorly attended, and then only by the upper classes.
He had mortally wounded the people. He did not consider
MERCADANTE and BELLINI so great as BEETHOVEN, and he
said so. This was indeed a crime, and proved clearly that
he could not play the piano !
Towards the year 1840 the relations between LISZT and
the COUNTESS D'AGOULT had become rather strained. The
inevitable dissolution which awaits such alliances
was evidently at hand. For a brief period on
DISILLUSIOK.
the shores of the Lake of Como the cup of his
happiness had indeed seemed full ; but es war ein Traum.
" When the ideal form of a woman/' so he wrote to a
friend, " floats before your entranced soul a woman whose
heaven-born charms bear no allurements for the senses, but
only wing the soul to devotion if you see at her side a
youth sincere and faithful in heart, weave these forms into a
moving story of love, and give it the title On the Shores of
the Lake of Como."
He wrote, we may be sure, as he then felt. He was
sometimes mistaken, but he was always perfectly open,
upright, and sincere.
41
642 LISZT.
A little daughter was born to him at Bellaggio, on the
shores of that enchanted lake. He called her COSIMA in
memory of Como. She became afterwards the wife of VON
BULOW., then the wife and widow of RICHARD WAGNER.
But in 1840 the change came. The Coimtess and her
children went off to Paris, and the roving spirit of the great
545. musician, after being absorbed for some time in
ITALY, composition, found its restless rest in a new series
AUSTRIA,
KUSSIA. o f triumphs. After passing through Florence,
Bologna, and Rome, he went to Bonn, then to Vienna, and
entered upon the last great phase of his career as a virtuoso,
which lasted from 1840 to between 1850-60.
In 1842 LISZT visited Weimar, Berlin, and then went to
Paris. He was meditating a tour in Russia. Pressing
invitations reached him from St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The most fabulous accounts of his virtuosity had raised
expectation to its highest pitch. He was as legendary even
amongst the common people as PAGANINI.
His first concert at St. Petersburg realised the then
uuheard-of sum of 2,000. The roads were crowded to see
him pass, and the corridors and approaches to the Grand
Opera blocked to catch a glimpse of him.
The same scenes were repeated at Moscow, where he gave
six concerts without exhausting the popular excitement.
On his return to Weimar he accepted the post of Kapell-
BEETHOVEN'S STATUE. 643
meister to the GRAND DUKE. It provided him with that
settled abode, and above all with an orchestra.
5 16.
BEETHOVEN'S which he now felt so indispensable to meet his
BTATUE. . f 1 i
growing passion for orchestral composition. But
the time of rest had not yet come.
In 1844 and 1845 he was received in Spain and Portugal
with incredible enthusiasm, after which he returned to Bonn
to assist at the inauguration of BEETHOVEN'S statue. With
boundless liberality he had subscribed more money than
all the princes and people of Germany put together to make
the statue worthy of the occasion and the occasion worthy
of the statue.
The golden river which poured into him from all the
capitals of Europe now freely found a new vent in boundless
547. generosity. Hospitals, poor and needy, patriotic
LISZT s celebrations, the dignity and interests of art. were
PRINCELY B
MUNIFICENCE. a \[ subsidised from his private purse.
His transcendent virtuosity was only equalled by his
splendid munificence ; but he found what others have so often
experienced that great personal gifts and prodigious eclat
cannot possibly escape the poison of envy and detraction.
He was attacked by calumny; his very gifts denied and
ridiculed; his munificence ascribed to vainglory, and his
charity to pride and ostentation; yet none will ever know
the extent of his private charities, and no one who knows
anything of LISZT can be ignorant of the simple, unaffected
41 *
644 LISZT.
goodness of heart which prompts them. Still he was
wounded by ingratitude and abuse. It seemed to check
and paralyse for the moment his generous nature.
FE;TIS saw him at Coblenz soon after the Bonn festival,
at which -he had expended such vast sums. He was
548. sitting alone, dejected and out of health. He
DEJECTION ga ^ j^ was s ^ c | c o f everything, tired of life,
AND '
REVIVAL. an d nearly ruined. But that mood never lasted
long with LISZT ; he soon arose and shook himself like a
lion. His detractors slunk away into their holes, and he
walked forth victorious to refill his empty purse and reap
new laurels. His career was interrupted by the stormy
events of 1848. He settled down for a time at Weimar,
and it was then that he began to take that warm interest
in RICHARD WAGNER which ended in the closest and most
enduring of friendships.
He laboured incessantly to get a hearing for the Lohengrin
and Tannhduser. He forced WAGNER'S compositions on the
band, on the GRAND DUKE; he breasted public
5 * 9 * opposition and fought nobly for the eccentric
WAGNER.
and obscure person who was chiefly known as a
political outlaw and an inventor of extravagant compositions
which it was impossible to play or sing, and odiously un-
pleasant to listen to.
But years of faithful service, mainly the service and
LISZT AT SEVENTY-TWO. 645
immense prestige and authority of LISZT, procured WAGNER
a hearing, and paved the way for his glorious triumphs at
Bayreuth in 1876, 1882, and 1883.
At the age of seventy-two LISZT retained the wit and
vivacity of forty. He passed from Weimar to Rome, to
550. Pesth, to Berlin, to Vienna, but objected to cross
LISZT AT ^g sea ^ an( j ^.QJ^ me ^ a j. k e wou i(j ne ver again
SEVENTY"
TWO. visit England. Latterly he seldom touched the
piano, but loved to be surrounded by young aspirants to
fame. To them he was prodigal of hints, and ever ready to
lavish all sorts of kindness upon people who were sympathique
to him.
At unexpected moments, in the presence of some timid
young girl overpowered with the honour of an introduction,
or alone with a friend when old days were spoken of,
would LISZT sit down for a few minutes and recall a phrase
of CHOPIN or a quaint passage from SCARLATTI, and then,
forgetting himself, wander on until a flash of the old fire
came back to his eyes as he struck a few grand octaves, and
then, just as you were lost in contemplation of that noble
head with its grand profile and its cascade of white hair, and
those hands that still seemed to be the absolutely uncon-
scious and effortless ministers of his fitful and despotic will,
the master would turn away break off, like one suddenly
blase, in the middle of a bar, with " Come, let us take a
little walk ; it will be cool under the trees " \ and he would
646 LISZT.
have been a bold man who ventured in that moment to
allude to the piano or music.
I saw LISZT but six times, and then only between the
years 1876 and 1881. I have heard him play upon two
occasions only, then he played certain pieces of CHOPIN
at my request and a new composition by himself. I have
heard MME. SCHUMANN, BULOW, RUBINSTEIN, MENTER,
and ESSIPOFF, but I can understand that saying of TAUSIG,
himself one of the greatest masters of technique whom
Germany has ever produced : " No mortal can measure
himself with LISZT. He dwells alone upon a solitary
height."
(A Leaf from my Diary.)
As I drove (in the autumn of 1880) through the groves of
olives brightening with crude berries that clothe the slopes
of Tivoli, and entered the gateway which leads
551.
r ENTER THE up to the ducal Villa d'Este, it was with some-
E ' thing of the feeling of a pilgrim who approaches
a shrine. Two massive doors open on to a monastic cloister,
and the entrance to the villa itself is out of the cloisters, just
as the rooms are entered from the cloister of Trinity College,
Cambridge.
Here for six years past in the autumn LISZT has led
a retired life, varied by occasional excursions to "Rome.
KIND ENQUIRIES. 647
I was conducted up a staircase which opened oil to a lofty
terrace, and thence into a side room, whilst the Swiss valet
disappeared to summon the Abbate LISZT. In another
moment I saw a side door open, and the venerable figure
of LISZT, already for years engraven on my heart, advanced
towards me.
It was the same noble and commanding form with the
large finely-chiselled features, the restless glittering eye still
full of untamed fire, the heavy white hair, thick mantling
on the brow and cropped square only where it reached the
shoulders, down which I can well imagine it might have
continued to flow unchecked like a snowy cataract.
He came forward with that winning smile of bonhomie
which at once invites cordiality, and drew me to him with
both hands, conducting me at once into a little inner
sitting-room with a window opening on to the distant
Campagna.
The room was dark, and completely furnished with deep
red damask cool and shadowy contrast to the burning
sunshine of Italy. After alluding to our last
552.
meeting in WAGNER'S house at Bayreuth, which
ENQUIRIES. recalled also t he name WALTER BACHE, who
has worked so bravely for LISZT'S music in England, he
said, " Now tell me, how is BACIIE ? I have a particular,
quite particular, regard for BACHE ; he stayed with me
here some years ago, and he has been very steadfast in
648 LISZT.
presenting my works in England ; and tell me, how is
VICTOR HUGO ? and have you seen KENAN lately ? " 1
was overwhelmed by these inquiries and the like. I could
not give him very good accounts of M. HUGO, whose health
I feared was declining ; but I said that the last evening I
had spent with him in Paris, he had received up to twelve
at night, and seemed full of life ; although his hours were,
as a rule, much earlier now. Of M. RENAN I could, of
course, speak much more fully, as he had recently been
a good deal with me in England. " RENAN took me to
M. HUGO'S when I was in Paris, and we had a delightful
evening/' he remarked. After asking after a few other
personal friends, he said, " I am glad to see you here. At
this time I have a little more leisure. I escape to this
retreat for rest. At Rome I am besieged (obsede) by all
sorts of people, with whom I do not care to entertain
particular relations why should I ? what have we in com-
mon? they come out of curiosity to stare, that is all;
and even here 1 am worried with callers, who have no
interest for me " ; and indeed it was current in Rome that
the Abbate LISZT would receive no one at Tivoli ; and
especially ladies were not admitted. I was, therefore, much
gratified when he said to me, " You are married why did
not you bring your wife ? Come again with her." And so
I did ; and on my next visit LISZT offered us each an arm.
He was much taller than either of us, and, looking down
with a paternal air, said, " Come, my children, I will show
A GLORIOUS VIEW, 649
you over the garden. '' But on ray first visit to the Villa
d'Este I was alone.
I could not help admiring the situation of the Villa.
" Indeed/' said LISZT, " this is quite a princely residence ;
it is rented by the CARDINAL HOHENLOHE, with
OOo.
A GLORIOUS whom I have had very old and friendly relations ;
he is good enough to apportion it to me in the
autumn ; you see his picture hangs there. The place is
quite a ruin. It belongs to the DUKE OP MODENA, but of
course they can't keep it up now : the Cardinal spent
2,000 to make it habitable. You shall see presently, the
terraces are rather rough; I don't often go about the place,
but 1 will come out with you now, and show you some
points of view. I lunch about one o'clock ; you will stay,
and put up with the hospitalite de garqon."
He then led me to the window. Down the slope of a
precipitous mountain stretched the Villa d'Este gardens;
tall cypress-trees marked the lines of walk and terrace;
groves of olive, between which peeped glittering cascades
and lower parterres, studded here and there with a gleaming
statue, and tall jets of water, eternally spouting, fed from
the Marcian springs; the extremity of the park seemed to
fade away, at an immense depth, into the billowy Cam-
pagna.
It was like an enchanted scene ; from the contemplation
of which I was roused by the Abbate taking my arm, and,
650 LISZT.
passing through several ante-chambers, we emerged on to
the raised terrace, which commanded one of the most
striking views in Italy, or the world.
" Round to the left/' said LISZT, ' ' lies Hadrian's Villa ;
and perhaps your eyes are good enough to see St. Peter's
yonder in the horizon." The grey mist hung at a distance
of eighteen miles over the straggling buildings of distant
Rome; but they gleamed out here and there. Beyond these
wooded flanks of the mountain ; beyond the ruins of villas
where MAECENAS arid HORACE and the ANTONINES held their
revels ; beyond the rushing murmur of cascades and foun-
tains; never silent, yet ever making a low and slumbrous
melody, lay the Campagna like a vast lake, over which
the shadow of cloud and flicker of sunlight swept and faded
out : and again, beyond the Campagna, loomed the Eternal
City with its mighty dome.
We seemed lifted into the upper air, as on the spacious
summit of a lofty precipice ; the dry vine-leaves hung about
the trellised parapets, and the Virginian creeper was just
beginning to redden.
LISZT was silent. As I looked at the noble and expressive
features, never quite in repose, and strongly marked with
the traces of those immense emotions which
554.
INTO TUB have been embodied by him in his great
EN ' orchestral preludes, and thundered by him
through every capital in Europe, in the marvellous per-
A CHAT ON SELLS. 651
formances of his earlier days, I could not help saying,
" If you do not find rest here, you will rest nowhere on
earth " ; it was indeed a realm of unapproachable serenity
and peace. Then we descended by winding ways, pausing
in the long walk, thickly shaded with olive-trees and the
beloved ilex, where fifty lions* heads spout fifty streams
into an ancient moss-grown tank.
" It is," said LISZT, " a retreat for summer; you can walk
all day about these grounds, and never fear the sun all is
shade. But come down lower"; and so we went, at times
turning round to look down an avenue, or to catch, through
the trees, a peep of the glowing horizon behind.
Presently we came to a central space, led into by four
tall cypress-groves. Here, up from a round sheet of water
in front of us, leapt four jets to an immense height ; and
here we rested, whilst the Abbate gave me some account of
this Villa or Chateau d'Este, and its former owners, which
differed not greatly from what may be found in most guide-
books.
As we re-ascended, the bell of Sta. Croce, in the tall
campanile over the cloisters which form part of the Villa
d'Este, rang out a quarter to one. It was a bad
555.
A CHAT bell, like most Italian bells, and I naturally
" alluded to the superiority of Belgium bells, above
all others. Rather to my surprise, LISZT said, "Yes, but
how are they played ? I remember being much struck by
652 LISZT.
the Antwerp carillon." I described to him the mechanism
of the carillon clavegin and tambour, and reminded him
that the Antwerp carillon was much out of tune, Bruges
being superior, as well as of heavier calibre, and Mechlin
bearing off the palm for general excellence. We stopped
short on one of the terraces, and he seemed much in-
terested with a description I gave him of a performance
by the great carilloneur M. DENYN at Mechlin, and which
reminded me of RUBINSTEIN at his best. He expressed
surprise when I alluded to VAN DEN GHEYN'S compositions
for bells, laid out like regular fugues and organ voluntaries,
and equal in their way to BACH or HANDEL, who were
contemporaries of the great Belgian organist and caril-
loneur. " But," he said, " the Dutch have also good bells.
I was once staying with the King in Holland, arid I believe
it was at Utrecht that I heard some bell-music which was
quite wonderful." I have listened myself to that Utrecht
carillon, which is certainly superior, and is usually well-
handled.
We had again reached the upper terrace, where the
Abbate's midday repast was being laid out by his valet. It
was a charming situation for lunch, commanding
556.
LIBZT PLATS that wide and magnificent prospect to which I
ME ' have alluded; but autumn was far advanced,
there was a fresh breeze, and the table was ordered indoors.
Meanwhile, LISZT laying his hand upon my arm, we passed
LISZT PLAYS TO ME. 653
through the library, opening into his bed-room, and thence
to a little sitting-room (the same which commanded that
view of the Campagna). Here stood his grand Erard
piano. " As we were talking of bells/' he said, " I
should like to show you an ' Angelus ' which I have just
written-"; and, opening the piano, he sat down. This
was the moment which I had so often and so vainly
longed for.
When I left England, it seemed to me as impossible that
I should ever hear LISZT play, as that I should ever see
MENDELSSOHN, who has been in his grave for thirty-three
years. How few of the present generation have had this
privilege ! At Bayreuth, I had hoped, but no opportunity
offered itself, and it is well known that LISZT can hardly
ever be prevailed upon to open the piano in the presence
of strangers. A favourite pupil, POLIG, who was then with
him at the Villa d'Este, told me he rarely touched the piano,
and that he himself had seldom heard him " but," he added
with enthusiasm, " when the master touches the keys, it is
always with the same incomparable effect, unlike anvone else,
always perfect."
" You know," said LISZT, turning to me, " they ring the
( Angelus ' in Italy carelessly ; the bells swing irregularly,
and leave off, and the cadences are often broken up thus " :
and he began a little swaying passage in the treble like
bells tossing high up in the evening air : it ceased, but so
softly that the half-bar of silence made itself felt, and the
654 LISZT.
listening ear still carried the broken rhythm through
the pause. The Abbate himself seemed to fall into a dream ;
his fingers fell again lightly on the keys, and the bells went
on, leaving off in the middle of a phrase. Then rose from
the bass the song of the Angelas, or rather, it seemed like
the vague emotion of one who, as he passes, hears in the
ruins of some wayside cloister the ghosts of old monks
humming their drowsy melodies, as the sun goes down
rapidly, and the purple shadows of Italy steal over the land,
out of the orange west !
We sat motionless the disciple on one side, I on the
other. LISZT was almost as motionless : his fingers seemed
quite independent, chance ministers of his soul. The dream
was broken by a pause ; then came back the little swaying
passage of bells, tossing high up in the evening air, the
half-bar of silence, the broken rhythm and the Angelus
was rung.
Luncheon being announced, we rose, and LISZT, turning
to his young friend POLIG, who occupied an apartment
at Este, and enjoys the great master's help in
K XT
ABKATE 'AND his musical studies : " Go, dear friend," he said,
ZL REVEREXDO. . .
"and join us m about an hour nay, sooner
if you will/'
So we sat down in the cozily-furnished little sitting-room
dark, like all the Abbate's suite of apartments, and
evidently intended to shut out the sun.
ANECDOTES. 655
I was still heated with our clambering walk, and LISZT
insisted on my keeping on my great-coat, and provided me
in addition with a priest's silken skull-cap, playfully re-
marking, "As you call me 'Abbate/ I shall address you
as < 11 lleverendo/ and whenever you come here, you will
find this priest's cap ready for you."
The " hospitalite de garcon " proved anything but ascetic.
A vegetable soup, maccaroni with tomato sauce, a faultless
beefsteak or " bistecco" dressed with fried mushrooms,
cooked dry ; a peculiar salad, composed of a variety of herbs
in addition to leeks, onions, lettuce, and fruit, the like of
which I can never hope to taste until I lunch again with
the Abbate at the Villa d'Este.
"VVe were alone. I need not say that, in such company,
the wines seemed to me to possess an ideal fragrance and
a Sicilian flavour wholly unlike and incompara-
bly superior to the heavy vintages of Spain.
ANECDOTES.
There were some questions about MENDELSSOHN
and CHOPIN that I had always wished to ask ; but at first
the conversation was much more general. We spoke of
the curious recent fancy of the Italians for WAGNER'S
music ; the way his operas had been produced at Bologna,
and just then Rienzi at Rome. " Yes," he said; "the
Italians are beginning to understand more kinds of melody
than onej they perceive at last that WAGNER'S melody
pervades each part of his score it is " la melodie aplusieurs
656 LISZT.
etages" This notion of " a melody in flats," or " of
several stories/' struck me as most apt, as well as humorous.
Speaking of WAGNER, I related to him an unhappy occa-
sion on which I had been requested by LORD H to
try and prevail on WAGNER, when in England, to accom-
pany me to his house one night, where we were to meet
a royal princess most anxious to see WAGNER. I reluc-
tantly undertook the mission, but failed to induce the
great Maestro to go with me, and so was placed in the
unpleasant position of having to apologize on my arrival for
his absence. " Ah ! " said LISZT, laughing, e< a similar thing
occurred to me lately : some royalties at Sienna asked me
to get WAGNER to meet them ; but I knew WAGNER better,
and at once declined to charge myself with that commission.
Your mention of LORD H reminds me that I knew him
years ago ; indeed, in my young days, I was on one occasion
at his house, and, curiously enough, a regrettable event
occurred to me also. Some ladies present importuned me
to play. I was not unwilling, but I did not quite care for
the manner in which I was pressed, and I declined ; indeed,
I believe I left the house rather abruptly. Well, it was a
time when I was playing a good deal in the various capitals
of Europe, and much more fuss was being made with me
than was perhaps necessary ; and then, you know, I was
much younger, and I dare say acted hastily ; but I have
always regretted it."
He spoke very little of his extraordinary successes when
LISZT ON SOME GREAT MUSICIANS. 657
at his zenith, which can only be compared to the sensation
produced by PAGANINI. But he spoke, as I have elsewhere
stated, with pride of having received the kiss of BEETHOVEN.
" Ay," he said, " when I was a very young man, and in
public too, it was difficult to get the great man to go
and hear rising talent; but my father got SCHINDLER to
induce BEETHOVEN to come and hear me and he embraced
me before the whole company ." A similar event occurred
to JOACHIM, who, when a boy, received the public embrace
of MENDELSSOHN after playing a fugue of BACH'S.
LISZT spoke in the highest terms of HERR RICHTER, at
the same time regretting that the Wagner Festivals at the
559 Albert Hall had not been financially more suc-
LISZT ON cessful. Having been accused, in America and
RICHTER,
MEYERBEER, elsewhere, of misrepresenting the relations be-
AND MEN- tween WAGNER and MEYERBEER, and knowing
that WAGNER would never mention M-EYJJR-
BEER'S name, nor allow anyone to speak of him in his
presence, I asked LISZT whether it was true that MEYERBEER
had introduced WAGNER to M. JOLY in Paris, with a view
to bringing out his Flying Dutchman, knowing all the time
that M. JOLY was on the point of bankruptcy. " Well,
said LISZT, " that is probably true. No one is exactly to
blame, if a youcg unknown man fails to arrive at once at
the Grand Opera de Paris ; getting up a work there is a
question of many months and thousands of pounds. WAG-
42
658 LISZT.
NER J S libretto was bought for a small sum, his music dis-
carded, and he was practically turned adrift. Afterwards,
he was notoriously forced to live by arranging Italian opera
tunes for the piano and cornet -a-pist on. It is possible that
MEYERBEER may have been of some small use to WAGNER
at first, but WAGNER will not hear of him. MENDELSSOHN
had the same antipathy/' Now I saw another opportunity :
" I have often wondered, in reading MENDELSSOHN'S letters/'
I said, " why his allusions to you are so brief and so few ;
here and there, we read that you were of the company, that
the evening was delightful, and that you or CHOPIN played;
and MENDELSSOHN seems to have little more to say, though
in his allusions to many of his great contemporaries he is
often explicit and detailed enough."
" Ah ! well," said LISZT, " MENDELSSOHN'S letters have
been, to some extent, what is called arranged and selected
for publication. There is a good deal which it was not
advisable to print, or that couldn't be printed; and then
there was something between me and MENDELSSOHN : I
am sure I don't quite know what ; but at one time, a
certain coolness sprang up between us; it was, however,
much more between our followers than between us. MEN-
DELSSOHN did not get on with the French : at Paris, for
instance, and with reason there ; then, at Berlin and
Leipsic too he had his difficulties with the musical autho-
rities, some of whom were certainly my friends. Tlic
first time I saw MENDELSSOHN was at Berlin; I called in
LISZT ON SOME GREAT MUSICIANS. 659
the morning, about twelve o' clock ; be was charming, full
of life and vigour, and received me joyously. MADAME
MENDELSSOHN pressed me to stay to lunch, and, meaning
to go, I still stayed on talking and playing, till suddenly it
was six o'clock, and then he said, ' Now you must stay and
dine.' So I stayed, and left about nine o'clock, after a
delightful day; then the next time we met we had some
words about MEYERBEER, whom MENDELSSOHN could not
endure, and I spoke rather hotly. I dare say I was in the
wrong, but somehow, from that time, we ceased to be quite
so cordial, and we did not meet very often ; but there was
no rupture or quarrel between us, none ever ; our partisans
quarrelled ; but between us personally there was never any
real animosity. And then quite late in his career, a year
before he died, MENDELSSOHN did a very graceful little
thing. He brought me a MS. of BEETHOVEN, a chorus
copied in BEETHOVEN'S hand out of MOZART'S Don Juan; he
knew it was the kind of thing I should value very highly,
and he bade me keep it for his sake. Well, I was travelling
a good deal I gave it with other things into my mother's
keeping, and I suppose it was shown about, and someone
stole it ; at any rate, it disappeared ; but I always like to
remember it, because it proved that, notwithstanding the
serious differences which had arisen between our schools
and methods before his death, personally he felt kindly
towards me down to the last."
The conversation turning on HEINE " Of course I knew
42 *
6GO LISZT.
HEINE. He was one of those original eccentrics whom it is
difficult to class : his reputation was a celebrite d'auberge.
Yes, he alluded to me in some of his prose works not un-
kindly. I had the misfortune (maladresse) to set one of his
songs to music."
" How few good poems there are suitable for music ! "
" Yes, and how little good music ! "
Of PAGANINI he said, " No one who has not heard him
can form the least idea of his playing. The fourth string
performances, the tunes in harmonics, and the
arpeggios used as he used them, were then all
BOTTESIKI, new to the public and the players too ; they sat
staring at him open-mouthed. Everyone can
play his music now, but the same impression can never
again be made/'
Of BOTTESINI, the double-bass soloist, he said, " He is
the only great player of my time whom I have never
heard. He never seemed to be in. my direction, and was
always moving about, but. is settled now."
LISZT was very humorous upon vamped-up reputations,
aal the airs and graces which musicians give themselves.
ft After a bit, in England at least, you must be ' dignified '
that is a good word ; the English like a ' dignified pro-
fessor !'" and he drew himself up like a very Pecksniff,
put on a look of solemn and dictatorial gravity, lifting
B'tiLOW, SV&IN8TJBIN, AND MEDIOCRITIES. 6G1
both hands sideways as it were to keep off all common
intruders.
Speaking of BULOW and of RUBINSTEIN, lie said, "They
are two men who stand quite apart from all the rest ; still,
the general level of pianoforte-playing has im-
mensely risen within the last twenty years.
RUBINSTEIN, .
AND There is, however, a good deal or ' humbug
MEDIOCRITIES. , f . ,. ,, -i
about some professional reputations ; and pre-
tending to hold very carefully a watering-pot, he added,
" Some reputations take a good deal of judicious watering.
I could mention some who had the good fortune to marry
people who watered them beautifully in the newspapers.
It makes some difference, you know. I don't say that you
can create a reputation without talent ; but the ' humbug '
is too often at top, and the ' talent * at the bottom ; and
in England you are miserably taken in by foreigners. It
is your own fault ; but the way mediocre foreign talent has
been over and over again pushed in England especially
bad singers is simply scandalous/'
How interesting it would be to read the memoirs and
criticisms of LISZT upon music and musicians for the last
5G2. fifty years ! No one living, perhaps, with the
LISZT exception of PROFESSOR ELLA, has such a rich
SPEAKS OF
CHOPIN, store of musical experience and incident to fall
back upon.
6G2 LISZT.
" I have often wished/' I said, " that you had written
more of your recollections of those great musicians, artists,
and poets with whom you have been connected." I alluded
to his charming Life of Chopin.
"Ah! "he said abruptly, "CHOPIN had no life, properly
speaking; his was an exclusive, self-centred personality.
He lived inwardly he was silent and reserved, never said
much, and people were often deceived about him, and he
never undeceived them. People talk of the style of CHOPIN,
the touch of CHOPIN, and of playing like CHOPIN. When
he played himself, he played admirably well, and especially
his own compositions; but he was supposed to have formed a
school of Chopinites, who had the Tradition and you heard
that Mr. This, an3 Madame That they alone could play
like CHOPIN he had formed them people danced round
them, and they affected to have the true Chopin secret.
Yes," he said, " it was absurd enough ; and CHOPIN looked
on, and said nothing; he was very diplomatic he never
troubled himself to stop this cant, and to this day there
may be those who play 'like CHOPIN ' who have received
the sacred ' Tradition/ C'etait comme cela du commence-
ment, ce n'etait pas I'ecole, c'etait plutot ' Veglise de
CHOPIN!'" The last words were pronounced in a solemn
tone, and with a look of mock gravity indescribably humo-
rous. As he rose from table, LISZT said, " You spoke of my
sketch of CHOPIN I have just brought out a new edition of
it at Leipsic." We went into the library, and he gave me
LISZT PLAYS CHOPIN TO ME.
663
a handsome quarto volume of 312 pages, printed in French
on fine paper. "Take it," he said; "you will find some
forty pages more than in the edition you have read." I
opened the volume, and on the frontispiece found that LISZT
had written aslant
I had conceived, ever since I had studied the life and
563. works of CHOPIN, the greatest desire to hear him
LISZT PLAYS played by LISZT : indeed, the numbers of those
CHOPIN r J J
10 ME - still living who have had this privilege must be
very limited. I ventured to say, " CHOPIN always maintained
CG4 LISZT.
that you were the most perfect exponent of his works. I
cannot say how grateful I should be to hear, were it only
a fugitive passage of CHOPIN'S, touched by your hand."
" With all the pleasure in the world/' replied the immor-
tal pianist ; and again I sat down by the grand piano, and
humming to him a phrase of op. 37, I begged that it might
be that.
" I will play that, and another after it." (The second
was op. 48.)
It is useless for me to attempt a description of a perform-
ance every phrase of which will be implanted in my memory,
and on my heart, as long as I live.
Again, in that room, with its long bright window opening
out into the summer-land, we sat in deep shadow in perfect
seclusion ; not a sound but the magic notes falling at first
like a soft shower of pearls or liquid drops from a fountain
blown spray falling hither and thither, and changing into
rainbow tints in its passage, as the harmonic progression
kept changing and tossing the fugitive fragments of melody
with which that exquisite nocturne opens, until it settles into
the calm, happy dream, which seems to rock the listener
to sleep with the deep and perfect benison of ineffable rest;
then out of the dream, through a few bars, like the uneasy
consciousness of a slowly awakening sleeper, and again the
interlude, the blown rain of double pearls until once more
the heavenly dream is resumed. I drew my chair gently
nearer, I almost held my breath, not to miss a note. There
LISZT PLAYS CHOPIN TO ME. G65
was a strange concentrated anticipation about LISZT'S playing
unlike anything I had ever heard not for a moment could
the ear cease listening; each note seemed prophetic of the
next, each yielded in importance to the next : one felt that
in the soul of the player the whole nocturne existed from
the beginning as one and indivisible, like a poem in the
heart of a poet. The playing of the bars had to be gone
through seriatim ; but there were glimpses of a higher state
of intuition, in which one could read thoughts without
words, and possess the soul of music, without the interven-
tion of bars and keys and strings ; all the mere elements
seemed to fade, nothing but perception remained. Sense of
time vanished ; all was as it were realised in a moment,
that moment the Present the eternal Present no Past,
no Future. Yet I could not help noticing each incident :
the perfect, effortless independence of the fingers, mere
obedient ministers of the master's thought; the complete
trance of the player living in the ideal world, and reducing
the world of matter about him to the flimsiest of unreal
shadows ; and I had time to notice the unconscious habits of
the master, which have already passed into historic manner-
isms in his disciples, like CARDINAL NEWMAN'S stooping
gait, GARIBALDI'S half closing of the eyes, or VICTOR
EMMANUEL'S toss of the head. So I noticed the first
finger and thumb drawn together to emphasize a note, or
the fingers doubled up, then lifted in a peculiar manner,
with a gentle sweep in the middle of a phrase things in
666 LISZT.
which those are determined to be like the master who can
be like him in nothing else ; also the peculiar repercussion
resonance, since reduced to something like a science by
RUBINSTEIN, and the caressing touch, which seemed to draw
the soul of the piano out of it almost before the finger
reached the key-board. When LISZT passed silently to
op. 48, he arrived at some stiff bravura passages, which
called forth his old vigour. Yet here all was perfect ; not
a note slurred over or missed; the old thunder woke beneath
his outstretched hands ; the spirits of the vasty deep were as
obedient as ever to their master's call. With the last chord
he rose abruptly; abruptly we came out of the dim,
enchanted land of dreams ; the common light of day was
once more around me. "Now, you must be off!" he
exclaimed; indeed, I had barely time to catch my tram for
Rome ; " but," he added, " I have something I wish you to
take to BACHE and DANNREUTHER " ; and he took out three
bronze medals, giving me the third to keep ; the design was
by a Roman artist of great merit. On one side was LISZT'S
own profile, on the other a star-crowned Fame holding a
palm-branch.
Before I left, I asked LISZT if I might give some account
in print of the delightful day I had spent in
"i AM TOO his company, so that the hearts of his many
friends and admirers in England might be
gladdened by some account of him.
ALL SOULS DAT. 667
"Whatever you will/' he good-naturedly replied; " write
what you like, and let me see it when it appears."
LISZT changes his residence three times every year : from
Rome to Weimar, from Weimar to Pesth, and at Pesth he
is usually occupied in bringing out or conducting some of
his works. But he is determined to cross the water no
more. He hates the sea ; indeed, I am told that he objects
even to going over the suspension-bridge at Florence. I
ventured to say to him, "In England we have heard of
LISZT, but already he is a kind of mythus. ' His legend/
as M. RENAN would say, ' has begun to form.' People are
beginning to ask, ' Was there indeed ever such a person ? '
Come over and prove to us that he still exists." But he
only shook his head. " I am too old ; I cannot come to
England."
LISZT was at Rome again in 1881. He happened to be
driving in an open carriage just in front of mine, when all
Rome went on a pilgrimage to St. Lorenzo
5C5.
ALL SOULS Cemetery on All Souls day. We saluted as we
passed. I thought him looking more worn than
in the previous year, but the old radiant smile and frank
courtesy were the same ; the fact is, he had fallen on a
staircase at Weimar in summer, and was obliged to be very
careful. He is not going to the Villa D'Este this year at
Tivoli. It is too cold, although the CARDINAL HOHEX-
LOHE promised to warm it well with stoves. Last year
(JGS LISZT.
about tliis time, when I was there with him, on a second
visit with my wife, the hot November sun beat so fiercely
down on our luncheon-table, spread on a broad balcony
overlooking the whole Campagna, that we had to move into
the shade, and the Swiss valet walked round and round,
taking innumerable flies out of our wine. But the morning
and evening were colder there than they are at Rome, and
November is usually cold enough in Rome.
" I am going," said GREENOUGH the sculptor, to me, ' to
look in on the Abbate LISZT to-night, at the Hotel Alberti."
" I will be of the party/' I said.
56G. J>
LISZT AT We were ushered into a little room at about
nine o'clock. The Abbate was seated at a game
of cards with his grand-daughter the BARONNE DE BULOW
and an Italian gentleman. He received us with his old
delightful grace and bonhomie. I insisted upon his finishing
his game of cards.
" Where are you staying, and how long have you been
here ? "
" Why, I left my card and address some days ago."
" Ah, leave me another, and write the address again."
" I will leave you six, and call every day, just to ask
after you/' said I, laughing.
" Then I will give you six invitations."
" But," I said, "you never asked ine to your birthday
festival/'
LISZT ON RUBINSTEIN, MENTER, WIRTZ. G69
" You are of those who are always asked."
" If I had been at Rome, I should certainly have slipped
in."
"I shall receive again; you shall yet come," said LISZT;
and then he sat down to finish his game as we others talked
to each other, the Abbate turning round to drop a word
here and there, just enough to show that he was not indiffe-
rent to our presence. They told me he had to be kept very
quiet, chiefly because he insisted upon getting through so
much work, and I felt that callers should be discreet and
not stay too long.
Presently the game was over, and LISZT, pushing aside
the cards, turned to us, and I had a few words with him.
The grand piano was open behind him, but we
LISZT ON were not to hear it. I told him of the piano-
RUBINSTEI.V, . , T -. , TT 1
MKNTER, recital mania in London last season : He said
of RUBINSTEIN, "He is the King of all pianists
now before the public, he must carry all before him " ; and
of SOPHIE MENTER, whom he had specially charged me to
hear, "No woman can touch her in every style she is
superb." He said he was at work upon orchestral com-
position, which, he intimated, the public did not always care
about ; and I spoke of our painter WATTS, who now delights
to paint for himself, and often declares that his favourite
conceptions are those least understood by the public.
Ah ! " said LISZT ; " but here is an artist," turning to a
670 LISZT.
stranger present, tl who paints for the public and is appre-
ciated " ; it was his graceful way of turning the talk off
himself; and then he went on to speak of that eccentric
Belgian artist, WIRTZ, whom he had known. The WIRTZ
gallery at Brussels is veiy famous now, though LISZT seemed
to fancy WIRTZ was still little known. " His creations,
he said, "were strange and fantastic, he was voted mad,
and the critics abused and laughed at him. I remember
he had a great studio, and at one end a kind of pulpit ;
he used to get up in it and preach against the critics and
society, and declaim about all sorts of things." LISZT told
a good anecdote about him. " He used to send these odd
pictures to the Salon year after year, which were always
returned; the judges would have nothing to say to him.
Well, he happened to become possessed of a veritable
RUBENS, and the malicious idea occurred to him to put
his own name to it, and send it up to the Salon. The
judges, taking it for more WIRTZ rubbish, sent it back.
Poor WIRTZ, you can imagine that he went up into his
pulpit next time with a good text ! "
I said to him later, "So you will not come to Eng-
land?"
" I have travelled so much ; I have gone about the world
till I am tired. I change residences, as it is, three times a
year : Pesth, Weimar, Rome; and if I went about more, I
could not get through the work which I have set myself to
do. The first time I was in England, I was taken there by
LISZT AND THE AMERICAN LADY. 671
COUNT ESTERHAZY ; you know, he was a great friend of
GEORGE IV. That was in 1824."
"You were at Antwerp last year; we all thought yon
might have come across."
" I was present," he replied ; " I shall never go aci oss
again."
An American lady here said to LISZT the other day,
without much discretion or tact, "Ah, Abbate, if you
_ C8 would only come to America, you could make
LISZT AND a large fortune ! " forgetting that LISZT had made
AMERICAN and spent immense fortunes, and had left quite
as much as he wanted.
" Madame," replied the great virtuoso, with that exquisite
touch of courteous but satirical humour of which he is
a master, " if you stood in need of that large fortune, believe
me I would go."
We spoke of WAGNER, and I noticed how he had infected
the most opposite schools, how even VERDI had drunk deep,
many portions of " Aida " being quite Wagneresque.
" Yes, he is well in the air now ; everything breathes Mm
at last."
"And the Parsi/alt " I said ; "is that new drama really
coming off? "
" Surely, next year in July, at Bayreuth. We shall have
all the world there."
" All the Wagnerites," I said.
672 LISZT.
" No, no, all sorts ; it is the fashion now ; tons les badauds
s'en melent!" which might be rendered in elegant American,
" Every cockney is just on him."
I understood 'that the Abbate would retire early, and we
took our leave. I can see his noble figure now, dressed in
a long black priest's gown ; as he rose with us,
took a candle and came out into the passage, the
GOOD NIGHT.
light fell flickeriugly upon those well-known and
majestic features; the thick white hair seemed to crown
him, falling straight on either side to his shoulders; he
looked like an old-world figure carved by MICHAEL ANGELO,
and standing in a niche apart, always the same strange
genial striking combination which has captivated society
throughout Europe and been the wonder of the musical
world for fifty years, always unconsciously scenic, statuesque,
and withal superbly human such will long linger in my
memory the Abbate FRANZ LISZT at Rome in 1881.
THE EXD.
673
POSTLUDE.
BONGS OF THE GOLDEN SEA.
MELODIES OF THE MIDDAY
HARMONIES OF THE SUNSET
ECHOES OF YOTJ ALL
DIE OVER THE WATERS
WAVES OF HUMAN FEELING
BBB AND FLOW OF EMOTION
LIPS AND DEATH AND DELIVERANCE
I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICES
LIKE THE SONGS OF THE ANGELS
EARTH-SWEETNESS AND EARTH-PAW
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM
O THE JOY AND THE PRESENCE
AND THE ETERNAL FRESHNESS
OF THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY
FULL OF THE RINGING VOICES
FULL OF THE TIDAL PULSKS
SONGS OF THE GOLDEN SEA
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